I'm not 100% sure what the author was trying to achieve with this book, whatever it was it feels very confused about what message it's trying to put across. The writing style is juvenile and the story is quite badly constructed. There's never any real coherent development of the characters, who are universally awful, all of them.

Full review was delayed due to reviewer illness. I'll need to re-read the book to provide a full review, but star rating is accurate.

This is just not appropriate and I do not understand why it was written. Was this author trying to do some sort of rage baiting of the internet? I would not recommend this to anyone.

I am very conflicted about how I feel about this book. It touched on many triggering subjected (transphobia, racism, Black Lives Matter, suicide attempts, etc) but not with tact. I was really interested to see where the story went, but ultimately Al gets away with it with no repercussions, doesn’t seem to have learnt anything, and everyone but him has an unhappy ending (and abruptly so). It's full of the N word, transphobia, outing, etc and it was all very uncomfortable. It feels like it was inspired by the 'cis white heterosexual males are the minority now' arguments, and I wanted so desperately for this to be joyous, for people to learn, etc. I doubt the author did much research beyond whatever is argued amongst transphobes and TERFs, especially when a trans pansexual character states non-binary people are faking being trans. Everyone was bigoted at one time or another, and it makes a mockery of real trans experiences/validates the transphobic arguments that perpetuate further transphobia in the news. I am begging for some self-reflection. I was hoping for something positive to come out with but it just got worse and worse.

Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC.

I couldn't finish this book. It's awful. From the title, to the main character pretending to be a trans woman because "cis men don't get opportunities". I'm not entirely sure whether this is supposed to be a parody, but if it is, the author needs to make that MUCH clearer. As it stands, what I read of the book was ridiculously problematic. I wouldn't recommend this to anyone.

I don't really understand the point of this story. Why would you want to write a story like this? What is the purpose? I'm glad Al received some consequences for his actions but his offer to Harvard should have been rescinded but of course they kept the fact that this was all FAKE covered up. The dialogue in here was juvenile and I can't believe how many times I saw the 'N" word. That's disgusting. All of the elements I appreciated in this story don't amount to much because it was all so a cis white male could get into Harvard. He didn't get into Princeton as a white cis guy so he thought hey why not pretend to be trans. That's guaranteed to get me into Harvard! That is just wrong. I could understand the purpose of this if maybe the author showed Al's demise after pulling that publicity stunt but he didn't so what the hell is this?

I’m not sure what I just read.

I wanted to read this to see if there was some sort of redeeming arc to it: is this satire? Is there a lesson learned? The premise is so bad that I felt there needed to be something more to it.

Reader, there was not more.

There are many things that I could say about this book but it left me feeling very baffled. What was the point?

- The main character, Al, is extremely unlikable - he’s a complete narcissist who doesn’t recognize his privileged status as a white, cis male. When faced with this knowledge, Al tries to make a case suggesting that racism is a thing of the past, affirmative action takes away white people’s chances, & that reverse racism is a thing.

- The author uses weird race & height descriptors that read as fact instead of description & it just seems really strange.

- There’s weird sexual hazing/touches/I have no idea how to describe it stuff happening in the guys locker room

- Lots of N-word usage

But mostly it reads like a Republican making fun of the trans community. Al concocts his plan to pretend to be trans & immediately sets to it. He makes a mockery of what a trans person experiences in their life by purposefully not putting any thought into how a trans person would feel. He throws around arguments & hot topic words because he enjoys “finally” being a minority. It’s like some weird power trip once he realizes that he’s got attention & a social media following. He only cares about his college application to Harvard. Multiple friends of Al’s are put in situations where they are asked to support Al, & ultimately all of them end up facing some sort of negative consequence with being an unknowing accomplice to Al’s scheme.

Except Al himself.

I desperately wanted Al to be faced with repercussions from his actions, but he gets everything he wants. His parents find out the truth & tell him to continue pretending to be trans until a later point when he can announce he is detransitioning. & he does. Then he goes to Harvard. The end. He gets exactly what he wanted.

I’m not sure what the point of this book was. I sure as hell didn’t learn anything. Neither did Al. There was nothing redeeming in it. Big yikes all the way around.

*also reviewed on goodreads*

I was excited for the premise of this book, but the execution was horrible. The writing on this was lackluster. The character development was so flat, and the plot lines were a mess, with some hanging resolutions. I honestly wonder if this wasn’t written to be intentionally offensive, but if so the writing is so poor they fail at even that.

Thank you to Netgalley for the e-ARC
I honestly don't really know what to say about this book. I can almost see what the author was intending but for the most part it just didn't really come across that way. The writing felt quite juvenile, and the ending felt open, with most of the character arcs being unsatisfactory and unfulfilled. I'm aware that one does not have to like a character for them to be a good, well-written character but honestly, I'm not sure there was even one of those in this book. Everyone's personalities flip-flopped and it was difficult to get to know each character. Overall, I would not recommend. Once again, I see what the author was attempting but I just don't think it really comes across that way.

The author clearly tried and failed at the ostensible task at hand. Either that, or this book has malicious intentions.

I wanted to get into this book but everything just felt really off from the start. Right off the bat, in the description itself our MC "realizes that the world is not built for straight, cis, white, men anymore". Like, please be serious um.. And then a few pages in he talks about how his mom cleaned up a senator's blackface scandal by spinning it about him cosplaying as Michael Jackson for for Halloween and he got elected for it.

It was kinda uncomfortable throughout, especially the high school dialogue that was a pain to get through, as well as the need to describe every new character's appearance like "Trent, my 5" 9 white best friend" or "our coach, 6"5 who was chocolate coloured and muscular" ??? Like it just reminded me of smut stories except without the instant banging.
I really couldn't take it any more and just glazed through the rest of the book. Honestly this was not for me so yeah. Kinda yikes 😬