Review Detail

Kristin Lattimer has it all. She's a championship hurdler, has a full-ride scholarship to college, a terrific boyfriend she's in love with, and she's just been voted homecoming queen. One visit to the doctor changes everything she's ever known. Kristin is intersex. It's hard enough for her to try to process and deal with this information, but when it gets leaked to the whole school, she finds out just how quickly people can turn on you.

I admit, I went into this book a little nervous. Not because of the subject matter but because I was expecting, and received, a lot of medical information and it could have turned into a medical textbook with a side of Kristin, instead of Kristin's story with medical facts. I was nervous for no reason. The medical facts, all the information, fit so well into the story without making it dry.

I really liked Kristin as a character. She was really sweet and caring and there was a reason she was voted homecoming queen so when people who she'd been nothing but nice to turned on her so quickly, it made me so angry for her. Her whole journey was very hard to read but also very powerful and necessary to read. She was almost completely ignorant before she was diagnosed so we saw the process of her learning and all the questions she suddenly had.

I loved the inclusion of the support group. It was nice to see the good side of the internet, connecting Kristin with people who knew what she was going through and who could offer advice. Also, all the research Kristin and her dad did, all so easily accessible to them. I appreciated that the school counselor was nice and wanted to help and do her job. I also appreciated that there were a few classroom discussions held, as in actual schoolwork.

The plot was mainly about Kristin and her dealing with her diagnosis, but also about everything that came with being labeled as different. The bullying, the harassment, the loneliness, the anger, the denial but it wasn't just about the negative. There was acceptance, there was new friendships, there was understanding. The book included a hopeful message and it did so without sounding like an after school special, which I thought was important. This is a message that needs to be heard.

As I said, the book was hard to read because what Kristin was going through was so unfair. It was also very informative and insightful. This is the type of book there needs to be more of, the kind that gets people talking about it. Maybe if there's more talking, there will be more understanding, and if there's more understanding then we'll have more acceptance.