I have tried to read this book a number of times always telling myself I will eventually read it because it has such strong reviews. Sadly I just couldn't get into it and connect. It's one of those, "it's me and not you" cases which happens. Check out other reviews though as this may be the book for you in the way it wasn't for me.

I was not able to get into this book..... I did highlight the book on our social platforms as I hope the message helps people. Best of Luck to the author.
It was not reviewed on our site as we review books we enjoy

DNF - I actually tried to read those book twice, I received the eARC from here and then I also got sent a physical copy from the publisher. I just couldnt get into this book either time I tried, sadly.

This book is every bit realistic and insightful. I have never read a book that made me so angry, yet satisfied. I wanted to toss this book at a wall in the best way and you’ll have to read it to find out why that is. I am very thankful that I had the chance to read this

This is easily one of the best debuts I’ve read this year. I was expecting to enjoy this one, but it absolutely blew me away. Themes such as religion, abusive parents, and hell — even bisexuality haven’t been portrayed as often as they should be in YA fiction, but Zack Smedley does them justice here. All of the characters and relationships are fleshed out, even the smallest ones. The prose are natural, and the humor is so funny. Deposing Nathan is so good, and even more — so important. I recommend this book with all my heart. Read it. 5/5 stars and a new favorite.

Well done. An interesting format in telling the story between deposition statements and flashbacks. A good surprise at the end made this a nice mash-up of mystery and the search for identity.

This book begins at the end. Nate and Cam get into a fight right at the beginning. Cam is charged with stabbing Nate, yet it’s hard to see why when they become friends. Nate recounts their relationship as part of his deposition following the fight. Cam insists that Nate tell the whole story of what happened in their fight during his deposition, which seemed strange since he is the one who was charged.

The ending was a complete shock to me. I had no idea what would happen at the end of the deposition. However, when I look back on the story, there were hints at what would happen throughout it. My jaw dropped open when I read it. It was an amazing twist!

I found this story so compelling and hard to put down. I loved it!

Thank you Page Street Publishing for providing a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Deposing Nathan is one of those books that takes you in a very different direction than you expect. One of the heaviest themes in this book is what makes a decision right or wrong. Nate knows that if he testifies against Cam, his best friend will serve a long jail sentence. The two boys are the only people who know the truth about what happened, and this burden weighs on Nate because he desperately wants to do good. But people don't often fit into well-defined categories of "good" and "bad," which heightens Nate's problems all the more.

I also loved how well the author portrays Nate's faith crisis. People whose religious beliefs and queer identity are equally important to them often have a hard time getting the two halves of who they are to coexist. Throughout the book Nate grapples with his beliefs – his spiritual beliefs, his beliefs about his moral conscience, and his beliefs concerning his family. Challenging these beliefs is one of the hardest things for Nate to do but only through self-discovery is he able to reach peace.

If you're looking for a book that will just emotionally destroy you, here it is. But don't say I didn't warn you. That being said, though, Deposing Nathan deals heavily with themes of domestic abuse between Nate and his aunt. If that subject matter could potentially be triggering to you, I'd recommend researching the book a little further before reading it. It can be intense at times.

Content Warning: Homophobia, Hate Crime, Child Abuse,

Deposing Nathan is testimony on how difficult sexuality and homophobia can be, even for the more privileged.

Let me get the one personal preference bit out the way first: I’m an atheist. I’m as anti-religious as possible without being an asshole. Thus, I did not connect with Nathan’s love and struggle with the Church. I kept thinking, “but WHY?” At least until the Mom connection was explained.

Now for the one unfavorable bit: I was justifiably pissed off in the beginning. I literally made a note that if SOMEONE didn’t start pointing out how awful and unreasonable SOMEONE ELSE was being, I was going to quit because fuck pretending that shit is okay.

Thankfully, I didn’t have to quit.

AS FAR AS HOW THINGS WENT….
Bi boys!
Love the dialogue between Nate & Cam
Confronts the bi’s are cheaters head on
Friends to lovers to….?
Love the dichotomy between the loving sheltering and the punishment protection.
Flew by, couldn’t put it down or stop thinking about it. Sticks with you afterwards too.
I really did not expect basically everything after the gayness jumped out. Almost a Tiffany D. Jackson level of revelation. The difference being, looking back is a perturbing quiet “ohhhhhhhhhh shit” rather than Jackson’s signature “wait, WHAT?” mind fuck. If things turned out worse, it’d be more like the latter.

I’m not going to lie to you. This is not a HEA. This is not a “fun” coming of age and coming out. Don’t go reading this wanting fluff.

I was not expecting to love all the characters so damn much. Even Though Nate and Cam would’ve been assholes in other novels. Hell, Nate would’ve been one in this book without his POV. Well, he is at times, but an understandable asshole. Not a justified one, but you know.

I love how everything flips and I can’t even pinpoint where things turned around. Like Cam says, “I think that how you feel toward someone doesn’t really change. More like, your feelings eventually get to where they were always going to end up. You evolve.”

Amazing stylized for the Layaway dragon theme.

four-half-stars

I re-read the ending and damn it made me tear up all over again. If I could include it without spoiling, it’d be on my favorite quote list for sure.

I have only just read the last page of Deposing Nathan, and I am already writing this review. If you know anything about my reviewing style, you'll know that's a rare occurrence. However this book affected me so deeply, and I have so many things flying through my head, that I have to write them down. It's necessary. So if half of this review descends into a babbling, incoherent mess just know that's because those are my exact emotions at this point. This book was raw. It was beautiful. It was devastating. I'm an exhausted, emotional mess, and I'm not even upset about it.

The way that this book unabashedly explores so many moral quandaries that most YA generally tends to avoid, is what really hooked me in. From the beginning, this is a story that isn't afraid to talk about the big things. See, Nate was raised in a family that is very religious. His relationship with God is one in which he strongly believes that anything outside of what the church teaches will lead him on the wrong path. To his aunt and his father, Nate is a good boy. He attends church regularly, gets good grades, has the perfect girlfriend, and is pretty much your all around average teen. There isn't anything else he wants in his life. Until, that is, he meets Cam.

As I watched these two meet for the first time, and their relationship started to evolve, I was helpless to look away. Smedley hasn't just created flat characters in Nate and Cam. Oh, no. These two are probably the most introspective teens that I have ever met in my life. They know that they have flaws. They acknowledge them, and mull through them, and fight all the battles inside that we've all been through at some point right there on the page. Some of Nate's thoughts, especially once he suspects that he might have actual feelings for Cam, are brutal. When his aunt reacts to his new feelings with anger, and eventually descends into physical violence to keep them apart, you'd be hard pressed not to want to gather this boy into your arms and hug him until it stops hurting. I cried, friends. I bawled. I'm not going to lie to you. There is nothing on these pages to stand between Nate and Cam's emotions, and yours. Yet, I wouldn't have it any other way.

There are simply perfect moments in this book. Snapshots full of smiles and love. Snapshots of confusion and anger. It's like watching someone grow up right in front of you, with all the messiness that brings. Then, just when I thought that this book couldn't possibly impress me any further, the ending elegantly tackled the idea of toxic relationships in a way that made me start to sob all over again. We live in this book filled world of happy endings, and perfectly tied bows. Unfortunately, as we all well know, that's not normally how life works. The ending of this book was perfection, because it wraps things up in a way that feels realistic. The last few paragraphs of this book will get you, and you'll be thinking about them for hours afterwards. Trust me on this.

When I started this review, I was so concerned about being able to fairly portray to you how impressive and important this book is. I'm tearing up thinking about my journey, and how essential this book will be for so many people. Zack Smedley has written something special. This is a book about self acceptance, and self worth. It's a book about the relationship between strict religious upbringing and self discovery. It's a story about family, love, and growing up. This story is big, and brave, and brings such an important voice to the current YA space.

I'll leave you with a quote, because I don't know what else to say. Well, no actually, I'll end by saying that I recommend this book with every single last fiber of my being. Please, read this.

"If you think you have to earn enough points on someone's rubric for them to accept you, then either you're wrong to assume they won't love you for who you are, or they never loved you in the first place."

I was excited when I first saw the announcement for this tour for DEPOSING NATHAN, as I really enjoy reading contemporary issue books that give me all kinds of feels. And boy did this book give me all the feels! It’s a compulsive read that took my emotions all over the place. I had about 10 notes on my Kindle that I wrote, about half of them at times where I got frustrated with one of the characters or furious at another and the other half where my heart either soared or broke. It’s a bit astonishing to me that this is a debut novel, and from such a young author; it feels like it was written by a seasoned, oft-published pro.

I really like the framing of the novel as a story being relayed via a deposition (which, if you don’t know, is essentially an interview/testimony in a legal proceeding that is done outside of court, either in lieu of actual court testimony or as a preliminary matter prior to court proceedings). It is a clever way of telling the story, and I promise it’s not boring or dry, as a deposition might sound :) The characters are all so strongly drawn, and I guarantee your feelings about them will be equally strong, whether good, bad, somewhere in between. My absolute favorite character is Cam, who we learn at the start is accused of stabbing Nathan (hence the deposition). But Nathan, our MC, is such a complicated and flawed character that I have nothing but praise for Mr. Smedley for making me care so darn much about him. There is so much that he does and says that frustrated me or pissed me off, but I also have so much sympathy for him, and as a parent I often wished I could reach through the pages and hug him and tell him he has worth, he matters, and he can be his own person. I think it’s relatively easy for an author to give us a character that we instantly fall in love with, one who is purely good or sympathetic, but I truly admire the skill and bravery it takes to write a character who is truly complex and has some serious flaws, all without alienating the reader and making us care deeply for them. This is precisely what Mr. Smedley has done with Nathan, and it is truly masterful.

In DEPOSING NATHAN, Mr. Smedley provides us with an unflinching portrait of a character who is struggling with questions about his sexuality, struggling to understand how his desires and actions impact his relationship to God and whether he is a “true” or “good” Christian, and struggling to figure out the line between being his own person and doing what his father and aunt expect of him. The ending of the book just about destroyed me, and yet it was the perfect resolution. DEPOSING NATHAN is an incredible debut, and I highly recommend it to anyone who enjoys contemporary issue books and those who are hungry for diverse YA options.

RATING: 5 shining stars!

**Disclosure: I received an early e-copy of this book for purposes of this blog tour. This review is voluntary on my part and reflects my honest rating and review of the book.

Sixteen-year-old Nathan has never stepped out of line. Always following the rules and listening to what his parents tell him to do Nathan is your all-around good kid. This changes when he becomes friends with the new kid Cam. Cam encourages Nathan to try new things and challenge himself. But a year after their friendship began sees Nathan in a deposition, giving a statement that could land Cam in jail.

**Trigger Warnings: Internalized homophobia, homophobia, emotional and physical abuse**

So to start with a small disclaimer that this book gave me so many emotions. Most of them were frustration. The type where you wish you could reach inside the book and just shake the character and tell them to make better choices!!

Deposing Nathan was fantastic, but I’ll be the first to say that Nathan is a real a**hole at times. Like he isn’t such a great person for most of the book which was the source of most of my frustration. Nathan is selfish and rude, and incredibly homophobic. Much of his homophobia sprouts from his firm religious beliefs. I wasn’t expecting religion to play such a big role in this book, but it does. Nathan and his family are devout Christians, and for Nathan, God is a very big part of his life.

You might be wondering why I’m giving this book such a good rating if the main character was such a douchebag. But that’s the point of the story, and that’s what makes it so much more meaningful. We’ve seen plenty of books where the main character struggles against the homophobia of others, people on the outside, but Nathan’s struggle is so much more meaningful because he’s trying to come to terms with himself. He’s realizing that what he’s feeling is against everything he believes in, and throughout the book, he struggles to consolidate one with the other.

You might think that the internalized homophobia and denial are the main themes of this book, but there is so much more that happens. Throughout his deposition, Nathan recounts his friendship with Cam. From the moment their friendship began Cam immediately starts challenging Nathan to expand his boundaries and break the rules a little. As great as it is to see Nathan make a genuine friend and break some of the extremely strict rules and guidelines set by his aunt, there are drawbacks. Drawback number one being Nathan's aunt.

From the get-go it's apparent that she's incredibly controlling, needing to be in charge of every aspect of Nathan's life. She disapproves of his friendship with Cameron, disliking Cameron's influence and the way he encourages Nathan to break some of her ironclad rules.



Besides the incredible plot and characters, I also really enjoyed the formatting of this book. I love when books mix the recounting of events that have already passed while mixing in events that are happening at the moment. I also love when books leave you guessing and trying to figure out what actually happened.

Deposing Nathan is a hard-hitting book which brings across a lot of important messages. 10/10 would recommend, but warning for immense frustration at all characters involved.

I'm giving this book five stars, even though I only read the first 10% and the last 10-15%. It was extremely painful to read, and Nathan's aunt's character reminded me so much of my mother. I grew up in a fundamentalist Christian cult (much more repressive than even Aunt Lori's beliefs seem to be, from what part of the book I read) and even what little I read brought back some really bad memories.

After reading the ending, though, this is a story that needs to be told. It needs to be read, and I fully intend to finish the book at some point. It does, I think, need some serious content/trigger warnings though.

Nate’s always been a good kid. But when he becomes friends with the new guy at school, Cam, his family notices a change. Cam’s the kind of guy who forces him to think about life, the universe, and his dreams … and, yeah, sometimes they break the rules. Soon their two worlds twist around each other and, as Nate explores his feelings for Cam, everything implodes in a fistfight that ends up with Nate stabbed and Cam in jail. Now Nate’s forced to give a statement under oath. But to tell the truth about everything that happened? Well, that’s complicated.

Never before has a debut caused so much emotional whiplash. However much praise Zack Smedley is currently getting for this book is not enough. Deposing Nathan is nothing short of a complete triumph. Period. Full Stop. And yes, that might sound like raving praise, but so rarely does a novel come along, particularly a debut, that provides such a complicated and satisfying reading experience as this one does.

Smedley achieves this by using a unique framing device. The opening showcases how everything brutally ends: Nate and Cam fighting. However, Smedley quickly pulls back and reveals that this action has already happened. Nate’s actually speaking at a deposition, reliving the past several months under the gaze of the very cast of characters that caused so much tumult: his father, his aunt Lori, and, of course, Cam himself. It’s awkward and uncomfortable as Nate recounts how a simple friendship blossomed into something violent, and Smedley draws as much tension from these scenes as possible.

Genuisely, this setting also gives heft to Nate’s story. While some of his actions might make him seem like an unreliable narrator, the fact that he’s at a deposition suggests that the reader is hearing the whole truth.

With that, it’s the characters themselves that make everything click. They’re unapologtically messy, caught in the weird period of transition that is high school. Nate struggles with himself, his faith, and his family all without examining his legitimate problems. Cam, cocky but vulnerable, confuses him with his constant questioning and unique worldview. Their relationship and interactions are entirely believable in a way that isn’t always happy or pleasant, but it’s always real.

It helps that Smedley has an amazingly readable style. Short chapters packed with action and snappy banter, this book flies by. And yet it’s anything but breezy. Rather, it’s like a roller coaster without a visible ending. It loops and turns, careening dangerously until it suddenly stops. And upon exit, there’s a moment of sadness that it’s over, but pure contentment that it happened at all.

This is the book to read this year.

Thanks to @netgalley and @pagestreetpublishing for the advanced Kindle copy of Deposing Nathan by Zack Smedley. This book is available on May 7th.

This was a brutal and honest portrayal of two teens questioning their sexuality. Religious dogma and child abuse play a major role in how this friendship devolves into toxicity. This quick-paced read was the literary version of a train wreck for me—I didn’t love the characters, but I also couldn’t put it down. I think that many teens will be able to connect with the story and perhaps even have a moment of clarity about their own toxic relationships.

I absolutely could not put this down. It was just so...readable! I haven't been a teenager in some time, but this book took me right back in terms of feelings and environment. Very well written, poignant work.

This book reminded me of my favorite book, "A Separate Peace" by John Knowles! A gorgeous portrayal of friendship, sexuality, religion, and abuse in relationships. I expected it to be dark, of course, but the general atmosphere was darker than I could have ever imagined.

I recommend if you're in the mood for psychological teenage angst.

Full review to come on my blog!

*This was sent to me for review from the publisher. All thoughts and opinions are my own.*

4 stars.

I was expecting to love this, so it's no surprise that I did, but I'm glad that I did.

I loved that the characters were messy, so so damn messy to the end. I feel like authors tend to want to wrap all of their characters in a pretty little bow at the end of novels, but that's just not realistic, and I loved that these characters were still not the best people in the end.

I'm not bisexual so I can't fully say if the representation is done well, but there were no glaring problems and I liked how it dealt with internalized biphobia!

Overall, this is an incredibly sad book but one of the most honest portrayals of queer teens that I've seen in awhile. This is perfect for fans of Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe, but with a bit of a mysterious twist.

A more detailed review to come soon, but Zack Smedley has joined Adam Silvera as "queer YA authors who get me sobbing hysterically in a fetal position." Deposing Nathan is a beautifully complex, astoundingly organic look at religion and sexuality and learning to live with both, and the effects of parental abuse on the development of teens. A tough read. But a must-read.

An insightful, thoughtful and well written novel that will generate a powerful discussion about religion, sexuality, abuse, the justice system and so much more. A page turner for sure, readers will not only be affected by this thought provoking novel but also the twists and turns it takes along the way. A must read and necessary addition to all YA collections!