Call Me Him is a raw and honest transgender coming of age story. I love the queer rep and trans MC. This book was heavier than I expected when I went into it. My heart absolutely went out to Wylie. He's a believable teenager who makes some dumb decisions that fit with the age.

It's definitely an interesting read to see the experience & trials of a character so young.
It's thoughtful and something to read and think over for sure.

I was uncomfortable with a lot of this book. I agree with the other readers that some of the content seemed excessive to the point of being unrealistic for the ages of the characters.

Finally getting around to reviewing this book feels kind of melancholy. It wasn’t a particularly enthralling read, but it wasn’t terrible either. It just kind of falls in the middle and perhaps that’s why it took me so long to read and review this book.

Thank you to the publisher for this book in return for an honest review.

I’ve attempted to pick this book up a couple of times. The content warnings at the start of the book are great because there is some very heavy stuff in here. To be specific, it starts with a cop groping the MC between the legs upon finding he’s transgender.

I feel as though this content is inappropriate in any book not listed as a horror and have rated it accordingly.

I am gald to see more trangender coming of age stories. The book is written in such a way that anyone could understand what the character feels and is going through even if they have not felt that way themselves. It really brought insight into a topic that many people may not understand.

I couldn't finish this book for being triggered for the way transphobia was dealt with here. I thought it would be a lighter book to read, but... it wasn't, and as a trans person, I made the call to stop.

I picked up this book with lots of interest, however I was unable to finish the book as it was different to my expectations, and did not grab my interest anymore. I will definitely try to revisit the book at a later date so I can publish my full, detailed review.

This was a solid, unique take on FTM trans perspective. Wylie is really into skateboarding, and has a tough time living his life the way he wants. His mom wants him to remain Willow, and even his friends ditch him. Wylie finds new friends, has some troubles, but in the end comes out on top in this coming of age, finding your true self novel.

I want so badly to love Call Me Him. But, I don't love the writing style. And I don't like any of the characters at the beginning. Add in that my mobi file was not formatted well for my kindle, I stopped reading.

River Braun didn't pull any punches! Call Me Him is a coming of age story all about a trans youth, in the early 2000s, living in an unaccepting environment. It was harsh and hard-hitting and honest, while also being educational and inspiring. I also loved that it was set in a time when I would have been around this age! I'll definitely need to pick up a finished copy for my shelves, because I am going to need this one in my collection.

Early 2000s trans goodness. One of the most relatable accounts of growing up I've ever read, and I would definitely recommend.

This is an extremely important book. It chronicles a young man's transition (FTM) and all he has to deal with, both medically/psychologically and in his daily life. He comes to understand and accept his desires as 'normal' and things that he has expectations of acceptance of himself as. Simple things, such as going shirtless and the freedom that that brings are monumental gains for Wylie. Being addressed by his preferred name and pronouns become mundane. Even saying all this, navigating family acceptance; school and institutional concerns and interpersonal conflicts take precedence. Early reading garnered the concern that the book glossed over some initial concerns; finding a therapist/counselor, guardianship and others were presented and then completed almost without any involvement. But I found that this was by design to leave more time to describe later issues and processes. I found the characters likeable and engaging; and given the events that were transpiring was amazing. I thought that I was pretty knowledgeable of the trans experience. Not so. Reading this book was truly an enlightening experience. I HIGHLY recommend it.

I wanted to like this story so bad that I didn't end up liking it, the story was a little not for me, and after I saw the first warning I got excited for something big, and something that I was expecting to like

As someone who is not a member of the LGBTQ+ community, this was an eye opening and insightful read for me. I have secondhand knowledge about the transgender community, so this was a great learning experience for me, and I would recommend it to anyone interested.

Wylie Masterson deals with awful friends, name calling, truly egregious police interactions (and good law enforcement interactions), and people using his dead name (before he really figured out what a deadname was). Watching his story unfold as a hetero female, it hurt me knowing that 1) this happened fictionally, for I am a bleeding heart for fictional characters, and 2) this happens every day for out and closeted people. I hated seeing first hand how people treated Wylie and how close minded people can be.

I loved Wylie's sense of humor and his ways to being true to himself until the last page. I loved his skating outlet, and although I don't understand much of skateboarding or poker, I didn't feel lost in the story during those parts. I loved that there was an expert on Wylie's situation throughout the whole book and it wasn't someone feeding Wylie false information. I loved that Wylie eventually found a support system for himself.

The only issues I had with the book were numerous grammatical errors (mainly spelling and dialogue punctuations), and SPOILERS <spoiler>the fact that his one love interest that seemed to be right was with a person who was 18 and legal, while Wylie himself was barely 15</spoiler>.

This book didn't knock my socks off, but I truly did enjoy it. The only reason for the four star rating was the aforementioned issues. I'd still recommend it to anyone looking for insight on the transgender community or teenage LGBTQ+ members in general.

Call Me Him is an intensely written novel that provides great insight into the struggles, both personal and societal, faced by young trans men every day. The story is very moving, and told from the alternating perspectives of the two main characters, Wylie and Alex. While the story does go on a couple of tangents that are not resolved, these don't detract from the book's overall impact. The story ends on a hopeful note, and I would highly recommend it to the parents of young trans men, as well as trans youth in general.

I got an ARC of this book.

I read everything that is queer that I can get my hands on. Give me all the trans boys. I need to see myself in a book.

But when the book, in the first twenty pages, has multiple scenes of drug use, sexual assault of a trans teen by adult men, misgendering, and revealing of the deadname it is time for me to nope out. I tried to keep going, but I am just so tired of trans people always being the victim of sexual assault. I expected a trans author to not write plots like this. Seriously. I expected someone from within the community to want a different plot than the one cis people allow us to have.

Netgalley review copy

Call Me Him by River Braun
3/5

As a 14 year old transgender boy, in a town that isn’t all that accepting, Wylie suffers alone. Until he meets Alex, the new kid in town. Wylie is welcomed into a world he never thought possible. He wasn’t alone. There are thousands of people just like him, trans men, trans women and people who are non-binary.

This book has some serious trigger warnings, transphobia, misgendering, body dysphoria, sexual assault, violence, bullying, self harm, anxiety, depression and drug use. And if any of these are triggering I would not recommend reading this book.

I think the main issue I had with this book and this may be spoilers was the use of drugs and how it was handled. Wylie is 14 year old boy who is smoking 2/3 joints before class and stealing medication from his mum and then passing out ‘falling asleep’ during class and none of the adults ever questioned it. At one point Wylie is found almost dead from overdose and then a few pages later is suddenly fine and no longer addicted to drugs.

That being said I liked the story for what it was, it really focused on the coming of age story and less on the romance.

Before anything, I do want to give a shoutout to this author for including a content warnings list at the beginning of this book. This covered particularly heavy topics, but I think we as a whole should normalize content warnings at the beginning of media.
That said, this wasn't the book for me. It was very dark and featured young teenagers (14-15) doing drugs, having sex, self harming, etc. Which yes is a thing that happens and I don't think it's necessarily something that should be avoided when writing fiction, but I'm rather uncomfortable with it. If it was personal discomfort, I would probably still be forgiving and rate it a bit higher, but I think a lot of it was just left there without being unpacked properly and can be kind of harmful, like some of the self-harm and the relationship between a 14 and 18 year old.
Few of the characters are that likeable and a lot of the adult figure are just written very awkwardly? Beyond just being uncomfortable with the subject matter, I had a hard time going through this because I wanted Wylie to turn out okay, but I was also not his biggest fan and as the book went on, I could tell that a lot of issues were going to be kind of swept aside instead of actually acknowledged.
I think this could be a pretty cool premise and it's both wild and very neat to think that we can have a period piece set in 2001, but overall, it felt unpolished at best and harmful at worst.

Thanks to NetGalley for providing a copy of this ebook for review.

Unfortunately I had to DNF at 40%

This book is a perfect read for someone, just not me.

I think if you identify with any of the characters based on the synopsis, a coming of age story that’s different from the stories we’ve heard over and over, or are looking for those vibes of the early 2000s, this might be for you.

I just wasn’t as interested in the story as I was in the synopsis and didn’t find myself connecting to the characters. I did like the writing style because it wasn’t overly complex and easy to read.

I might give this book another try in the future and I’d probably try another book by this author.