Great book!
I loved Alexis/Alek's voice and it was so nice to see a queer character be so sure of themselves. They had such a strong voice! That was quite refreshing!
Even though this book was well-balanced and went through sensitive topics without villanizing anything, the author tried to cover too many different topics at once in such a short book, so some parts felt a bit... unfinished...
But with that said, this book was excelent in so many way. I highly recommend it.

This is one that kept my interest for the most part and maybe just maybe I’ll pick it up again one day hopefully

In one word- Thrilling. This is a book about gender and religious belief. The writing is powerful and thank you Mia Siegert for granting us a view into their lives. I'm so grateful i am able to read about in Alexis/ks. They are such a great main character. I knew of the term but this my first exposure to a bigender character, and reading about Alexis/ks's struggle to fit in and deal with past trauma really added depth to the story.. Surrender our sons by Adam Sass is great contemporaries of each other.

this really dealt with tough topics and I felt it was really well done with dealing with topics that we don't think about. It was well written and had wonderful main character.

This is definitely a book that covers some pretty heavy topics. First there is the gender fluidity represented in the main character Alexis/Aleks who is bi-gender, a term that I was not at all familiar with when I started the book. Second is assault, the one suffered by Alexis/Aleks as well as the assault that is uncovered by accidentally listening to a late night confession. I do think that the topics were handled well, and in a way that it was easy to understand what was going on and why it was important to the plot and overall themes of the book. Even though I myself and not bi-gender the main character of the book was easy to relate and even sympathize with and root for. This was a very fast paced and enjoyable read, for the recovery ending if not for the troublesome subject matter. I will definitely recommend it as a good example of representation in YA books.

This book is really close to my heart! I git emotional reading this and somehow cry because of the experiences. It really did a good job portraying gender identification and religiousness. It is a quick read and a memorable one. So much love and respect for this book.

honestly, this was a pretty decent book. it wasn’t that bad, but it wasn’t the best thing in the world either. i might reread this book sometime soon, cause i was in a reading slump while i was reading this.

Loved this book. This is the first book I've come across that brings you into the life of a bigender person. I think Siegert does a great job portraying Aleks and his/her emotions and how hard it is to go through life when your extended family is not accepting of your lifestyle. How hard it is when they don't realize that it's not a choice your are making. It is just who you are. The book is full of twists and turns, intrigue, heartache, and laughter. A great YA book.

Warnings: sexual assault. Homophobia. Possibly others further into the book.
I picked this up because I liked the premise and people were speaking about it. I also got to like 40-something % and found myself just swiping through the pages.
So yeah. I figured if I was absentmindedly turning the pages, it meant I wasn’t actually interested in the story.

This was a very compelling read. I wanted to know more about Aleks/Alekis's being bigender and how that affected their day to day life, as well as what was happening in the church. At times it felt VERY judgmental of religion as a whole, but overall kept me interested until the very end.

DNF. I couldn't get into this one. Thank you for the opportunity to read it early. It just wasn't the book for me.

I absolutely loved this book! I really just love Mia Siegert and her writing. JERKBAIT was one of my favorite books. I really, really like how she manages to write books about topics that not a lot of people are talking about. She writes books that really make you think. She also has a bigender main character, I've never read a book with a bigender character so I really learned a lot, and I was able to understand what it's like to identify as bigender. In general, this book made me learn so much! I really liked her author's note at the end, which really made you understand why she wrote this book, she brings up a lot of fair points.

Thank you so much to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC.

I'm not sure what to think about this book. I loved the main character Aleks/Alexis who was a bigender teen.
The concept of the book was both originally and interesting. I was very intrigued by the fact that the MC was able to hear confessions and Aleks/Alexis takes on the roll of a guardian angle. He's a wonderful soul trying to ease people's pain.

However, there is a subject of abuse in the church which leads Aleks/Alexis to have a hard time dealing iwth that confession considering their past.

The only thing that bugged me about this book was that I don't think the author gave the story enough justice. It's a short book. Only 250 pages and I feel like it was trying to do a lot in a little bit of space. It felt so rushed at times.

I received this book as an arc from Net Galley and offer my honest review.

Book Details: After an assault, bigender seventeen-year-old Aleks/Alexis is looking for a fresh start―so they voluntarily move in with their uncle, a Catholic priest. In their new bedroom, Aleks/Alexis discovers they can overhear parishioners in the church confessional. Moved by the struggles of these "sinners," Aleks/Alexis decides to anonymously help them, finding solace in their secret identity: a guardian angel instead of a victim.

But then Aleks/Alexis overhears a confession of another priest admitting to sexually abusing a parishioner. As they try to uncover the priest's identity before he hurts anyone again, Aleks/Alexis is also forced to confront their own abuser and come to terms with their past trauma.

I’ve only my just finished this book and still feel shook from everything within it. I’m not a religious person but have been impacted by the stories of sexual assault survivors from the Catholic Faith. I appreciate the author for being able to offer up a story that allows readers to understand the shame, guilt and embarrassment that survivors carry with them daily for something that isn’t their fault. The way that the hyper vigilance, flashbacks and anxiousness that’s portrayed by Aleks/Alexis Is textbook PTSD and done authentically which I appreciated. As readers we are also submerged into the life of an individual who identifies outside “culture norms” as bigender and educated us in a non-threatening way on how we can do better.

One thing that I didn’t like, a bit of a pet peeve, is that while Aleks/Alexis wants people to accept them for who they are without question or assumptions; Aleks/Alexis is constantly making assumptions about Dima, Bernie, Joey and even their Aunt. I can see how that played into the story line, but it also felt too defensive and harmful.

This book is great! It keeper me engaged and interesting in a topic I knew very little about (bigender). The main character is strong and persistent and readers can definitely relate to him/her. The story is told through his/her lens and teaches readers to be compassionate. Anyone who is looking to read a thrilling and engaging book should definitely read Somebody Told Me! The authors shares her reason for writing the book which gives the reader insight into the mysterious plot.

This novel is so much more than a book to do with a bigender character. I mean, their being bigender is the inciting incident that leads to Aleks/Alexis living with their uncle and aunt, against their mum's best wishes mind you. Aunt Anne Marie and Uncle Bryan are late converters to the Catholic church. Bryan is a priest there.

What was really interesting--and written in Mia's author's note at the end--was the way that Alexis/Aleks first showed themselves to be uncomfortable with the overt Catholicism and yet, from the very first meeting with Sister Bernadette, it became quite clear that it was not what they thought.

Sister Bernadette is such an important character in this book, not just because of the crush Alexis/Aleks has on her, but because she shows a side of Catholicism that I've not seen present in many LGBT books: The way her faith with God is is shown to be incredibly personal and not dependent on converting everyone else around her. It's not about homophobia or transphobia.

And it isn't suddenly perverted by one man of faith's criminal actions towards a minor character (both in presence in the story, and in age).

Another first in this novel, at least in mainstream literature, is that the main character of this novel is bigender. Towards the end of the book, they are even beginning to question whether there are more genders within them that they haven't yet explored.

This is such a wonderful thing that's explored throughout the novel, but not made a big deal of. Mia writes about this changing gender within one person, and the difficulties that come given that it's not a gender expression that a lot of people even within trans and nonbinary circles talk about.

It's a very personal character note for me given that Mia was the first bi- or multigender person I spoke to after realising that was my own gender expression.

<i> Thank you to NetGalley for providing a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.</i>

I definitely have mixed thoughts on this book, but overall I enjoyed a lot of aspects of it.

The novel follows Aleks/Alexis, a bigender teen who moves in with their religious aunt and uncle after a traumatic event. They realize that they can hear the confessions from a vent in their bedroom, so they decide to help the people they overhear.

The things I liked: I always appreciate good LGBT representation, and this is the first book I've read with a bigender character. The distinct differences between Aleks and Alexis were clear, and it helped to really understand the character. This book tackles some delicate subjects, including homophobia/transphobia and sexual molestation in the Catholic church, and I feel it was done well. It was not a blanket condemnation of Catholicism, including some great characters who were diverse in terms of race and sexuality while still having that strong faith in God. There were also a lot of nerdy references, which I liked. More than once, I found myself Googling to see if the animes mentioned in the novel were real because they sounded like something I'd sit down and watch right now.

The things I didn't like so much: I had a really hard time suspending disbelief for several things in the story. I won't give away anything major in terms of later plot points, but the idea that a confessional would be so poorly designed that people could be heard clearly through an air vent in a connected house just seems highly unrealistic to me. Also, I am assuming that a lot of these things were only confessed to the priest. If that is the case, how did he not catch flak when things were happening because of Aleks/Alexis being Raziel? Surely at least one of the people would have connected the dots to their confession. The entire ending of the book was a bit lackluster for me. It felt so strange reading the book to see the main character suspecting the person they did when it was abundantly clear who the villain was from the very moment he appeared. I cannot tell if we as the readers were supposed to be surprised at that reveal, but I was just confused that Aleks/Alexis could have possibly suspected the other person.

All told, I still liked the book. It kept my attention and there were some good characters who made me want to keep reading. I liked the splashes of fandom (even the dark side of it that is brought up). I would definitely read more by this author.

4.5 stars

I received this book from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review

It's been almost a month since I finished this book, and I still have no idea how to review it. I think this is for two reasons. (1) reading Somebody Told Me was honestly such a surreal experience and I don't entirely know what to make of it, and (2) this book focused so heavily on extremely personal experiences that I quite frankly cannot speak on

That said, this book was utterly fantastic, so while I'm going to keep this short I'm going to list a few things that I loved about it:

- Aleks/Alexis's voice was so strong and absolutely carried the book. I've rarely read any book with this strong a voice, and it utterly blew me away
- The discussions on religion and abuse of religious power it had, without villainizing religion in any way
- The side characters were so wonderfully fleshed out and alive
- The discussions on fandom and how it can be toxic sometimes
- I also thought the character growth we see in Aleks/Alexis was so powerful and beautifully written

I cannot get over the fact that nothing about this book’s marketing seems to mention the fact that it’s very heavily about cosplay/conventions/fandom. The cosplay community is such an integral part of this book that the “past trauma” Aleks/Alexis has to come to terms with is something that could really only have happened to them at a convention. Which is not to say there aren’t still important takeaways from learning about that experience, because there are, but the situation presented in the book is 100% con-specific.

And it just feels like such a huge miss to not then market this book towards teens who go to cons and who engage with fandom, both online and in-person. Not everyone finds their best friends and their perfect community in fandom, and the cosplay community in particular struggles a LOT with navigating people’s genders and sexualities, as well as with objectification/consent/abuse/assault/etc., all of which are explored here in a way that’s real and eye-opening and could be so useful to younger people in these communities.

Aside from that, I think this book could be important to a lot of people, but it wasn’t really for me personally. I had some issues with the writing being a bit simplistic, characters being a bit too much like caricatures of themselves, and plot posts/twists being overstated and obvious, but I think all of that can be chalked up to the fact that I’m outside of the intended age group for this book. It’s refreshing to see a depiction of fandom that acknowledges its darker sides and isn’t just the happy place where a character feels truly at home.

Very hard to read but to me it's a necessity to read the hard along with the light. Well written but it has scenes of rape so it's up to you if you want to read it. Happy reading!