The 99 Boyfriends of Micah Summers

This is a fun and light read that was fast-paced and quick. Micah is easy to fall in love with. He’s the “Prince of Chicago,” but he’s relatively down to earth, with the same issues as everyone else. He’s super shy, and since he struggles to talk to his crushes, he creates these sketches of them complete with elaborate fairy tale descriptions of them and posts them to an anonymous Instagram account that he created. But he decides that things are going to change and Boy 100 is going to be real.

In this story, there’s a clear overlay of the bones of fairy tales on modern life. While Micah is facing his usual daily stressors, he enlists a squire, helper mice, and even a fairy godmother to complete quests to find the prince, in one of the best Cinderella reworks that I’ve ever seen. The fact that it’s a very queer story made this even sweeter for some reason, and despite seeing the ending coming a mile away, I loved watching everything fall into place, even through the struggle to get there. Micah grows a lot in this story, and I think that was the most meaningful part. I love seeing a character make positive changes in their life, and this book absolutely exceeded any expectations that I had in that department. There is one discussion of intimate matters, but nothing explicit happens on page, making this an age-appropriate read.

As a living bundle of energy, Micah has a fun stream of thoughts and a quirky and interesting group of people around him. He’s immersed in queer friends, supportive family, and I loved that I found a book with literally no trigger warnings. It’s almost like if a queer romance and Disney movies had a love child, it would be this book. This is a fast-paced, quick read, and I loved how warm and fluffy it was. Even the conflict wasn’t overwhelmingly angsty, although it did have just the right amount of angst, and it was full of grand, romantic gestures that bordered on over-the-top, with a lighthearted tone to everything.