Wow this is one of the best books I've read this year. I couldn't put it down and would actually escape to go read a couple pages whenever I could.  This book packs in so much that I could talk about, but don't want to ruin the magic with too many spoilers.

The two POVs of Morgan and Ruby contrasted so well and for once I didn't actually have a favorite. Morgan is recovering from a disastrous spiral of events in her life after being betrayed by someone she thought she loved. She is out and proud and determined to fight like hell to make a difference in the world for other LGBTQ+ students. Ruby is running ragged trying to live up to her manipulative mother's dream of being a pageant queen, all while being pressed by the weight of her struggling home life, stress of school and having to damp down her whole self.  Both go through a lot in this book and find self awareness and strength in different ways. I loved seeing multiple sides of coming out and grappling with how to live your whole self and how that can look so different for each person. There are a couple situations in this book where one partner wants a relationship to be out while the other is not ready - and how hard that is to navigate for both people. It's about acceptance of how someone else's coming out has to be their own and the tough conversations that happen around it. Both characters were flawed and had really wonderful growth.

So many of the other characters also shone in this book and I won't dive into those so they can really tell their own stories in this book, but I love a good contemporary romance that also has well developed "side" characters. There is also a lot of angst, longing, and a slow burn romance which is my favorite kind of love story. My biggest complaint is that it wasn't longer because I would really love to see more of the storylines involving some of the secondary characters play out more.
I cannot recommend this book enough. I absolutely loved it and think lovers of YA and adult fiction will really enjoy this!

Ughhhhhhhh!! I loved this so much!! I needed a WLW book and definitely got what I wanted from Some Girls Do. All the angst... all the closet to coming out... except for Morgan’s best friends, but maybe that’s being left for another story?

This is Dugan’s 3rd book and honestly, my fave she’s published so far. Give me more like this, please!! I love how all of her MC’s are Bisexual. I don’t read enough books with well represented Bi characters. So I’m happy this fills a hole I think the genre is lacking in.

I just really really liked this book, okay?! Jennifer Dugan does not disappoint.

I loved that Morgan was so loud and proud about being out and was so unapologetically herself (and had pink hair!!) Ruby was a beauty queen whose true passion was cars, and honestly, I loved that for her.

Dare I say, the ultimate meet cute is getting hit by a car? Maybe. The awkward and snarky encounters between Morgan and Ruby throughout the book were everything and their budding relationship was so cute to watch.

I loved the representation in this book and how you could see many of the characters learning to understand and accept each other.

There were a few characters I would’ve love more info on like Lydia, Tyler, and “Danny.”

Fingers crossed for a sequel 🤞🏼

dnf

I am not the intended age bracket for this book but I absolutely adore YA. The writing was not for me. The dialogue feels very juvenile and cringe-worthy. It’s a shame because I feel like the themes of book were very important, but unfortunately I can’t get past the writing to find out if it worked.

DNF.

I’d never read anything from this author before, but remember a lot of people talking about HOT DOG GIRL, so I was really looking forward to this one!

Hate to say, it veers on stereotypical queer storylines and I just wasn’t into it. I’m not going to assume the author’s identity, so I’ll just leave it at that. I also just wasn’t a fan of the writing and the repetitiveness it started to take on.

I was curious enough to want to venture further, but my friend (who was reading this with me) let me know about a few more things that happened and it just didn’t sit well with me. Hate that it didn’t work out, will probably still give HOT DOG GIRL a shot.

I enjoyed this one much more than I expected I would (not to say I didn't expect it to be good--I just didn't really have any expectations, because I hadn't heard much about it). Told in dual POV, this book tells the romance of Ruby, a picture-perfect pageant queen with a penchant for fixing up old cars, and Morgan, an out-and-proud track and field star who was forced out of her private Catholic school after coming out. Both of these characters are full of incredible depth, and a range of LGBTQ+ experiences are shown in this book, between Morgan's, Ruby's, and many auxiliary characters. Despite the incredibly distinct and larger-than-life main characters, this book feels incredibly real in a way that's difficult to achieve. I totally bought into all the emotions the characters were feeling and the things they were saying. I would definitely try another book from this author!

Thank you to Penguin Teen and NetGalley for my eARC! All thoughts and opinions are my own.

5 stars - 9/10

TW/CW: homophobia

Content Warnings: homophobia & child abuse

Thanks to Netgalley & Putnam’s Children for the e-arc!

The premise of this book sounded great, but overall after finishing it, I have some pretty mixed feelings.
First, for a few positive things I want to highlight about the book:
- it was very apparent that a lot of care was put into writing both of the characters. Ruby and Morgan both have very well-developed backstories and personalities, and you can see very well how their past experiences influence the way they think and act throughout the story – considering that characters are typically the most important part of a book to me, I really appreciated that
- it’s sapphic, the word “lesbian” is used on-page, and there’s tons of queer rep

That being said, there’s also some things I wasn’t a fan of. Mainly, both characters fucked up pretty significantly at some point in the book, and
it seemed like the author’s intention was to make them grow from it, apologize/make amends and then end up together. But I found the “growing from it” & apologizing part to be very rushed and not explored deeply enough for me to really believe that these characters could now be with each other without any problem.

Specifically, there was a scene where one of the main characters (Ruby) was uh, directly homophobic to Morgan (“why can’t you be more subtle about being gay, you don’t need to advertise it all the time” type rhetoric). While it is mostly implied that Ruby learns better eventually, i didn’t personally feel like that scene was addressed sufficiently.

As for Morgan, there’s a part of the book where she is extremely insistent on Ruby (and a side character) coming out publicly despite not being ready. Again, she did come to her senses about that eventually but it was very rushed and I didn’t really feel like the issue was explored deeply enough for me.

Age 14+ (TW: -intimacy, -profanity, -homophobia)
Tropes: enemies to lovers

🥰Pros: There are so many words I could use to describe this book, but the most prominent one is “understood”.

Some Girls Do certainly isn’t meant to be read for escapism, as it doesn’t stray from the realistic aspects of being queer (many of which aren’t easy).

So many topics were covered such as pressure to stay closeted, being called “too loud” for one’s self expression, sexual confusion, a lack of acceptance in a household, conflicting public opinion, physical changes, identity discovery, lgbtq relationships, lgbtq support and therapy, activism and so many more. I was blown away by the amount of education you could receive from reading Some Girls Do, and it was all tied into a perfectly constructed story. Nothing about it was glamorized or sugarcoated. It was raw, tough, and real.

I cannot stress enough how good it felt to feel seen and heard and understood. Though it was a fictional story, Some Girls Do felt so real.

Furthermore, the lgbtq representation made me squeal with joy! There were queer, trans, pansexual, bisexual, lesbian and gay characters!! Every page of the book continued to blow me away.

Something I really appreciated and admired was how the title was said by the main characters multiple times and the meaning kept getting deeper and deeper. I loved it!

It featured two POV’s (each of the main characters), and the best way to sum it up would be “lgbtq meets coming-of-age”.

•••

My favorite quote:

“I’m not spending my life pretending I’m something I’m not, or making myself smaller and quieter, just because someone else thinks I should.” - Some Girls Do, Jennifer Dugan

*This quote is from an ARC. It’s subject to change.

I recommend anyone reads this book. Allies too!

I enjoyed this book, though it wasn’t a favourite that I’ve read recently. I didn’t especially love Morgan, she was kind of irritating. I liked Ruby a lot more, I like that she was a mechanic, as I am also an amateur mechanic and gave serious thought to entering the automotive program at my local college.
Overall this book was good. Not great, but good.
3.5 stars

What a sweet story this one was! It didn’t wow me per se, but I also have no complaints.

The queer rep was great, and there were some things discussed that I haven’t seen much of (at least not lately), including the difficulties for athletes to come out (even when they’ve known their teammates/friends forever) and the difficulties in a relationship where one person is out and the other isn’t. I like that the author didn’t make it seem like there was a quick fix to a situation like that, and that communication is important (which is true for any relationship!) Morgan’s struggle with her old school, the lawsuit, and feeling like she just can’t do enough to help change things for the better was also so real and relatable (well, the latter of it all—I haven’t had to sue a religious institution... yet).

Idk, I just really liked the stuff that was normalized in this book, like consent, women having casual sex (and shutting down slut shaming), introducing yourself with pronouns (only people in the Pride Club did it, though, so there’s room for improvement where everyone is doing it, not just the queers), struggling with school (Ruby felt antsy a lot in class and was better doing things with her hands, like shop and gym), dads being more emotional than moms... gah, just good stuff to see all around! (Though my heart did break for Ruby—her mom was... something else.)

CW: parental abuse (physical, verbal), homophobia/homophobic comments

Some Girls Do by Jennifer Dugan 🏳️‍🌈

Thank you to @penguinteen for the eARC! Some Girls Do is out May 18. ✨

I’m starting pride month early this year with a couple amazing YA books featuring queer main characters in wlw relationships. I’m so happy I had the chance to read Some Girls Do, which was so good I literally could not put it down and was scrolling on my ereader late into the night to see how Ruby and Morgan would get together. The characters were so lovely and layered and I loved getting to know them; Ruby is a pageant queen with a rough background who’d secretly rather be fixing cars, sure of many things except for who and how to love, and Morgan is an out-and-proud track star who was forced to leave her old private school after suing them for discrimination. Together, they learn a lot about each other and themselves, what it means to be out, how to love, and how to be true to yourself.

I wish I had been able to read more books like this growing up. This was such a sweet and heartfelt read, and it’s definitely going on my list of top books of 2021 and just top books generally. I hope this gets the fame it deserves and reaches a wide audience, especially for young girls who want to see their love stories beautifully represented in media.

Thoughts and Themes: It took me a bit to really get into this story as I wasn’t really a fan of either of the characters or the plot when I first started reading it. Once I got to about 50% in though I was hooked and needed to know what really would happen to our two main characters, and not just to their relationship.

Something that I really enjoyed in this book is how it explores discovering queerness and being visibly queer. I really enjoyed the nuanced discussions that this book brings up about being out and what that means for different people. I thought it was important that the discussion about what it means to be out, and how being out may do more harm than good happened. I really liked how this book points out that queer people don’t have to be out in order to be valid, and how coming out doesn’t have to be the goal if you are queer.

I really enjoyed reading these characters be teenagers and have some of the typical teenage problems. I liked that we got to see them both in their classroom setting and also in their respective activities. I liked the setting for the story as it made sense to me, but sometimes I did wonder why those around them didn’t get more involved. I did wonder how some of the characters kind of faded into the background as you read on when they were important at the start of the book.

Characters: In this book you are introduced to a bunch of characters, but our main characters are Morgan and Ruby. You also get to meet both of their friends, and get a glimpse into their home lives as well when we meet their family members.

I have mixed feelings about the relationship between Morgan and Ruby, and was not content with the way that the story ended. There were moments that I just kept getting angry with either character as they kept hurting each other, and this doesn’t really solve itself in the end.

On the other hand, I thought that the two characters had great chemistry with each other and really enjoyed reading as they figured out their feelings for each other. I think their relationship with each other is so nuanced because of outside things that impact how they interact with each other. Morgan is so stuck on not wanting to have to hide her queerness and her belief that no queer person should be in the closet, that she doesn’t really see beyond that. Ruby is scared of what others would think if she pursues a relationship with a girl, and also knows what her mother’s reaction would be so she holds herself back from pursuing what she wants.

When it comes to the family units in this book, I couldn’t stand Ruby’s mother. She just was looking out for herself and blamed Ruby for so many of her shortcomings. I thought it was so sad that Ruby felt that she was living for someone else rather than for herself. I really did enjoy the relationship that Ruby has with Billy though and how supportive he is of her through the whole book. I liked that his support was more silent than vocal but he made it known that he loved her.

I really liked reading about Morgan’s family and seeing the contrast of her family and Rubys. I think this also really added to the complexity of their relationship and it was something that Morgan never really acknowledges. Morgan has parents and a brother who support her being queer and also are able to financially provide for her. I think it was important to see the divide between Morgan and Ruby when it came to socioeconomic status and how this also plays into the dynamics of their relationship.

Writing Style: This book is told in first person through dual perspective which I love. I can never decide if I prefer one POV or multiple POV because I think both work. I think that each book really calls for different styles and dual POV works for this book. I liked getting to see both of their perspectives of different events.

If this book did not include dual perspectives it would be really easy for you to sympathize with only one character and really hate the other. The way it is written, you start to sympathize with one as you read their section but then you get the other’s POV and realize that they both have their flaws. I think this was one of my favorite things in this book, neither of our main characters is perfect.

I loved Some Girls Do! This book is everything we need and then some. A story of two girls falling love while they're both in different places familial and sexuality wise - it is absolutely beautiful

. This book was really not that well written. All of the characters felt totally flat to me. Most of the dialogue was incredibly cringey and I genuinely could not tell you the plot for the life of me.

While I think some important themes regarding sexuality were talked about, it wasn’t talked about well enough.

I wish some of the side characters had been given more time in the spotlight. There was a lot of potential there (especially for Allie and Lydia) that I thought wan’t tapped into.

"You we're right at the meeting. School athletes don't really hang out with us (lgbtq+ club)."

This was a bit of a let down for me. I get what it was going for and that it's a complex situation for both characters but... fell flat for me. This whole "sports vs lgbtq+" thing was honestly annoying. Was it showing that kids could be both? well yeah but WHY make it such a central part of the story? I don't know. I did not connect with any of the characters and the whole dynamic felt off for me.

I often worry about reading YA novels that center around LGBTQ+ romances and their issues. As a pansexual, I know these issues can get oversimplified, or written in a "quick fix-it" way where everyone comes out happy, someone gets outed but it all turns out okay.

This is not a worry for Jennifer Dugan's "Some Girls Do."

"Some Girls Do" is a sweet, cute and swoon-worthy high school romances that focuses on just how hard balancing being true to yourself and keeping yourself safe can be. Both our protagonists in no way feel one-dimensional; they are fully rounded characters with complicated issues and ideals, ones Dugan wasn't afraid to have them compromise on when needed. Dugan master showing how prejudice still exists, even in open-minded societies, and how it can affect those who are both out and proud and those in the closet.

Aside from the wonderful dissection of being LGBTQ+ in high school, this book is adorable. The romance between Ruby and Morgan is the perfect balance between sweet and innocent and the heady lust that comes with being a teenager.

I cannot wait to recommend this book to others!

“I promise that I’ll help you find more opportunities, but activism isn’t something that happens in just one way or in just one place. There will always be more battles, and beating yourself up about not being able to do it all, all at once, doesn’t do anyone any good . Please take the time to honor what you’re already doing, because that’s important too.”

I did not expect to love this as much as I did. Judging from the cover and the premise, I thought I was in for an enjoyable, sweet, queer romcom and I got that, but there is also so much more within these pages. The premise of an elite track athlete who’s openly gay falling for a closeted bisexual beauty pageant queen that’s got a penchant for fixing old cars was compelling and the story itself delivered everything it promised.

Morgan was such a fierce character. After having to leave her private Catholic school because she broke the code of conduct by being queer and with the fire for justice burning inside of her, she arrives at the new school where she’s promptly nearly run over by Ruby. Morgan is many things—an elite track athlete, a girl who just wants to give back to the community and do her part in making the world a more queer-friendly place, and she’s a sucker for a pretty girl. Enter Ruby.

While I loved both POVs, I have to admit that I have a huge soft spot for Ruby.

Ruby isn’t an easy person to get along with. Overwhelmed with the beauty pageants she attends to make her mother happy, Ruby’s only escape is stolen moments with Tyler behind closed doors. Until Morgan comes along and makes Ruby question everything.

I loved the way sex was approached in this novel with how sometimes sex can be used as a weapon or protection mechanism, and most of all, a distraction. I think we get a lot of messages as teens about sex being the end-all-be-all and of course there are a lot of portrayals of sex-positive characters and first times that are romantic AF, but I really liked that here we got to see a different way sex is handled. Ruby uses sex to escape her own life for a few moments, to show people that she cares for them when she can’t find the words—in a life where actions speak so much louder than words to her, she also lets her actions speak for herself, even if they land her in trouble. I loved how messy and realistic Ruby was because we need more characters like her in YA—people who don’t get it right, people who mess up, and people who are so overcome with pressure that they lash out and keep people at a distance to save them and themselves later pain.

There’s also the relationship between Ruby and her mother that was painfully realistic. The way Dugan approaches the tough subject of what we owe to our parents and what they owe to us was mesmerising. I think everyone at some point in their lives wonders if they’re living up to their parents’ expectations and Ruby deals with that on top of having to “relive” the future her mother never got because she got pregnant with Ruby at a young age. Living your life for someone else can only end in disappointment, and it was tragic to see Ruby’s mother clinging to her bygone dreams by using Ruby, and in turn have to see Ruby go through with the beauty pageants she has no interest in just so she can keep her mother’s love. That’s by no means an easy thing to stomach, but Dugan takes such care in portraying this difficult dynamic between Ruby and her mother that it makes you feel like you’re right there alongside Ruby, trying to keep the peace by sacrificing your own interests for it.

Ruby and Morgan’s reluctant friendship that turns into a relationship is messy in the best way possible. There’s a lot of back and forth, of helping and hurting each other, of trying to figure out what it means to be a good girlfriend and that just because someone isn’t ready to come out doesn’t mean they don’t care for you. Ruby and Morgan both are very stubborn individuals with very differing goals out of life—Morgan has aspirations, Ruby just wants to get away from pageants. Morgan has a loving family, Ruby has a mother with a boyfriend who makes her feel unsafe to come home to their trailer. I loved the opposites attract and I loved how they kept butting heads but eventually, found their way—on their own, and together.

Beyond that, I could rave about so many different aspects of this book—Ruby’s best friend who was such a support system on her own, Ruby’s father who plays a key role in her realising that she is worth so much more than her looks and doesn’t have to hide behind impassiveness, Morgan’s older brother with whom she lives while finishing school (him trying to intimidate Ruby prior to their first date made me cackle), discussions of poverty and being a queer mentor, not to mention all the other amazing characters that deserve praise. But if you want to know more about what transpires in this story, you’ll have to pick up this spectacular book and see for yourself.

Bringing together a gay track star with a closeted beauty queen with a penchant for fixing up old cars, Some Girls Do is a nuanced, delicate and headstrong queer romance, perfect for lovers of Ciara Smyth and Jamie Pacton.

What an incredible book!! I have liked Jennifer Dugan's previous books enough to hazard trying this one and I was not disappointed. This book takes on two sides of the queer spectrum in a really wholesome and healthy way. On one side, Morgan is publicly fighting to be herself and has to deal with the trauma of homophobia but on the flip side Ruby has to stay closeted to ALSO avoid the trauma of homophobia. This bilateral coming of age story really provides an interesting look into the polar opposite ways queer people can experience the world and how it impacts their choices to be out and proud or keep it to themselves.
I loved how much Morgan and Ruby learnt from each other and how they changed over the course of the book. Morgan and Ruby's flaws didn't make them grating but made them more sympathetic. I teach kids like this. I WAS a kid like this right up until two years ago, in fact. The relatability and care with which every character is given the chance to grow and love is heartwarming and reassuring.
Incredibly well done!

3.5 Stars

CWs: Homophobia, some bullying/harassment, religious bigotry, mild slut shaming (challenged), underage drinking and intoxication, some sexual content, accidental outing, and homophobic parent/unsafe living situation

You know me, I hear about a queer YA romance between a track star and a beauty queen and I come running. (No pun intended.) I thought this was a quick, enjoyable, and thoughtful story exploring queer visibility and discovering queerness, and I liked it overall!

The two characters in this story are in two very different places when it comes to understanding and accepting their queer identity. Morgan is the star of the track star and starting over at a new school after the last Catholic school she attended claimed that her queerness violated their student code of conduct, thus putting her running career on indefinite hold. Ruby, on the other hand, is just trying to survive living in a relatively unsafe home by doing beauty pageants like her mom wants and keeping her head down. She's just discovering her bisexuality for the first time when she nearly runs Morgan over with her car and can't stop noticing the new girl after that.

While Morgan is someone who would happily join the Pride Club and wear graphic tees that loudly proclaim her interest in girls, Ruby isn't ready to be out yet, and that difference between them—while not inherently a bad thing—is a source of tension in their relationship. In that way, the story sparks a conversation about queer visibility—whether it's necessary, practical, or safe for every queer person to take that step, and what the upsides and downsides are to being "visible" and out.

I think that's the heart of the story, and it's a really important discussion that challenges readers to rethink the idea that coming out is the end goal for all queer people, or that being out is what makes queer people "real." Ruby doesn't know whether her mom is safe to come out to, and she can't risk coming out and possibly being thrown out of her home when she isn't financially stable and is, in fact, depending on a scholarship from a local pageant as being her ticket out. Morgan is of the opinion that getting involved with a closeted girl will "take her a step back" from where she's fought to be, and she has a very different perspective as someone who's trying to leverage her visibility as a means to effect social change and challenge the homophobic rules of her old school for the sake of other queer athletes coming up behind her.

Over the course of the story, Morgan is learning to be more empathetic for what Ruby is going through, and realizing that coming out is something that can't and shouldn't take precedence over someone's safety and well-being. Even though it takes a long time to get there, I think that's a really important message to internalize, especially for young readers.

While I enjoyed this story thematically, I found myself wanting a bit more from the main relationship. Morgan and Ruby have great chemistry, and I enjoyed watching their relationship develop, especially as they're tested and continue challenging each other, but I was missing that emotional component. As I mentioned, Ruby is just discovering her bisexuality for the first time throughout the story, and so she's very confused to begin with. And to be absolutely clear: that's valid, and there's nothing wrong with that. But not only do Morgan and Ruby get off to a not-so-great start with a near car accident, but then Ruby is sometimes playing games with Morgan and going back to her old friend-with-benefits, just because that's the easier choice. So it's not that Ruby "can't make up her mind," but that there's a lot of animosity between these two characters that they end up working through quickly in order to get to the romance part.

So it was hard for me to feel fully satisfied with their relationship, because they spend a lot of the story hurting each other—both intentionally and unintentionally—and I didn't really feel like they took the time to through those issues by the end. Especially with Morgan being adamant in her belief that she is "owed" Ruby's coming out if they're gonna be together (a belief that she holds for a majority of the book), that's something that changes very quickly and suddenly, with very little of the book left to fully explore that realization and how it would then impact the relationship.

Again, I think the story sparks a very necessary discussion about queerness and coming out, but because of the disconnect between the characters, it was hard for me to fully get behind the romance aspect of it. I don't think romances need to be "happy" to be "good," but I do hope that they're satisfying and mutually beneficial for both characters, and while Morgan and Ruby found a happy medium by the end, I was left wanting a bit more in their connection and in they way they reconciled with their mistakes.

As I said in the beginning, though, I still enjoyed this book! It's a story that explores social justice, queer community, coming out, untraditional family structures, and so much more. It is exactly what it says on the tin as a sapphic romance between a track star and a beauty queen on two very different paths, and I can say I was fully engaged as I read through it. I still enjoy this author and her writing (and I definitely recommend her debut, Hot Dog Girl) and I'm excited to see what she writes next.

Thank you to Penguin Teen for an eARC in exchange for an honest review!

Morgan transferred from a Catholic school after she was descriminated against for being gay. Her life on hold as her family she's the school, she transfers to a public school at the end of her senior year where she meets Ruby.

Ruby is bi and in the closet, her mom forcing her to participate in pageants and live the life she wanted before she got pregnant with Ruby. But when Morgan shows up, Ruby can't hide her feelings for long.

I'll be honest, I thought about DNFing multiple times because I don't like Morgan or Ruby. BUT I think the conversation surrounding when to come out and when it's safe for teens to come out was really important and we'll explored from both sides. I did enjoy the ending, so overall a 3.75-4 star rating!