Absolutely lovely exploration of various LGBTQIA+ identities and experiences. It sometimes felt a bit messy, all over the place, in terms of writing, like it still needed to be tightened, but I appreciated the messiness of the teen characters, making them feel realistic.

If you're seeking a heartfelt exploration of identity, love, and resilience, this story awaits you. In The Queer Girl is Going to Be Okay by Dale Walls introduces us to a trio of vibrant, queer teen girls of colour in the heart of Texas. Dawn, our protagonist, is an aspiring documentarian with a dream: to create a documentary titled The Queer Girl Is Going to Be Okay. Her goal? To capture the essence of queer love among teens in her community and secure a scholarship for film school.

Dawn's journey is layered with complexity. She lost her mother as a child, and her father grapples with mental illness. Yet, armed with her camera and unwavering determination, she embarks on a mission to explore love, friendship, and resilience. Through alternating POVs and interview excerpts from her documentary, Walls delves into the intricacies of grief, self-acceptance, and teenage relationships.

The heart of this novel lies in the unwavering bond between Dawn and her best friends, Edie and Georgia. Together, they navigate the vibrant city of Houston, capturing moments of joy, vulnerability, and hope. Walls skillfully portrays the intersectionality of their identities (queerness, race, and girlhood) making this a powerful and authentic read.

This is more than a coming-of-age story. It’s a celebration of friendship, resilience, and the belief that everything will eventually fall into place. Walls invites readers to laugh, cry, and believe in the transformative power of love.

Thank you to NetGalley and Levine Querido for a temporary e-ARC in exchange for my honest review.

A deeply real, fun, and heartwarming story of friendship and identity. I loved the representation of the book and how the main character is a trans woman. The queerness of the book was phenomenal and I loved the connection of their identity with film. The dynamics between the characters were wholesome, chaotic, and well-written. My main criticism was with some of the writing choices, I didn't enjoy the pacing, and the plot didn't intrigue me as much as I hoped. But it is YA so maybe I'm not 100% the target audience. Still a fun read.

A sweet and strong LGBTQIA book a wonderful group of friends going through life. It was wonderful to see the story for Young Adults.

This book is a ray of hope in a world where it feels like hope is rapidly fading. There are a lot of things covered in this book, many those in the queer community are all too familiar with. The characters feel real and relatable, and I thought Walls did a great job of brining them and their lives to life. Although everyone's experience is different, this would be a great book to help queer teens feel a little less alone, and others to understand a little of what they might face. Definitely recommend!

I wanted to love this book, but I only liked it. Perhaps my expectations were too high because the cover and the book itself are absolutely GORGEOUS!
Exhibit A
Exhibit B
Yet there are plot points that feel underdeveloped. The emotions that I think the author was trying to invoke from readers are not there.
BUT I still believe The Queer Girl is Going to be Okay is worth the read!
Read it for the:
LGBTQIA+ Representation
Found Family Trope
A Glimpse at Queer Love
LGBTQIA+ Representation
It’s difficult enough to find a book that has one character who is queer, but here we have a glorious cast to represent the queer community!




Insert cover here
From left to right we have Edie Cypress(left), Dawn Salcedo(center), and Georgia Graham(right).
Edie: the responsible one, the one who is set to be valedictorian, the one who has them all covered when it comes to giving sagelike advice. Also the one who has to lie about who she is and who she loves. As she fears being a disappointment to her extremely religious family.
Georgia: the poet, the getaway driver, if you need an emergency mani/pedi she is your girl. Who is also a nervous wreck about getting into her dream school, Kenyon College. Dreading that she will be left behind by her friends as they succeed and move away to college.
Dawn: the heart of the crew, lover of movies–watching them and making them, whose love language is gift giving. She loves love and wants to define it and find it for herself because she knows that there are an indefinable amount of ways to love. She is also her fathers caretaker, practically raising herself now that her mother has passed.
The girls are complex characters having both highs and lows as they grow up together.
Their stories take place during the month of March and roll over to the beginning of April. From the moment Dawn receives an email notifying her that her film excerpt has garnered her a spot in the next round of the Austin Film Festival to the day of the film festival. There is also a chapter dedicated to the day before graduation.. There are short chapters recounting the day's events from varying perspectives, never a definite story teller, but the narration bounces between the three girls.
Dawn, Georgia, and Edie represent unique experiences when it comes to growing up queer. Whether it be growing up in a household where you are raising you are raising yourself, where you are loved and accepted, or one where you have to hide your identity.

Found Family Trope
The girlies love each other and I loved reading about how they came to know each other. From their funky playlists to the serendipitous trips to the beach. They are a crew who found each other and are never letting go. Together they define love when it comes to friends, they are honest to each no drama between them they are just 100% supportive of one another. It was refreshing to read a YA novel where the inner circle didn’t have some sort of drama.
One of my favorite chapters to read was when they went shopping together. Dawn wanted to find an outfit to wear for the film festival. When she found the dress despite it being way out of her price range, Edie and Georgia were the best hype women:
“ ‘Wow. I mean, absolutely wow.’ Edie shot from her seat.
‘Incredible, amazing, genius, never the same, never been done before, not afraid to reference or not reference, daring, put it in a blender, pour it out the blender, drink the juice, stunning. I mean.’
‘I…don’t know what any of that meant, like, on a constructive level, but thank you, Geo, for the contribution.’ ”
(Walls, 59)
Their friendship was just a joy to read!
A Glimpse at Queer Love
Insert favorite quote
The Negative
Lots to love right? Why isn’t it a 5 star read?
The pacing and the sub plots
Overall the pacing was slow. Walls is very descriptive and focuses a lot on creating the scene. I loved these details. However, there were times when I thought things were going on a little too long.
When it came to the storylines for Georgia and Edie they were extremely underdeveloped. Edies’ whole storyline is that she has not come out to her parents due to her fear of being rejected by them due to their religious views. This puts a strain on her relationship with her partner, Ben, who is very much out and does not want to pretend to be something they are not.
—SPOILER—
There is the inevitable point in her story when her family finds out that she is gay. A moment that had been built up, but there is no discussion amongst the family instead her mother tells her:
“No, You’re not. And I don’t want to hear about it again, okay?” (Walls 186).
I was disappointed. I wanted there to be some attempt made by Edie where she tries to take control of the situation. Georgia, who knew about the conversation, doesn't even ask about how things are between her and her family. It's something that is just washed over and I wish there would have been more time dedicated to Edie.
There is also the awkward subplot for Georgia. Her family is her and her mother, they are an unbreakable duo. So close that Georgia calls her mother Frankie because they’re like best friends. Then her mother starts dating Simone, who turns out to be very creepy and makes his intentions clear that he is interested in Georgia. Georgia struggles to tell her mother outright about the advances her boyfriend has made towards her, but eventually writes a letter to tell her mother explaining everything. I understand the inability to voice words especially when recounting traumatic or uncomfortable experiences, writing things down can be a lot easier to explain things, but that’s where my understanding ends
The series of events afterwards are glossed over. Georgia confided in her friends before writing the letter but little action was taken with them. I would have loved to have seen them say that they would be by her side if she wanted to talk to her mom together as a unit and be there for support. Also would have loved a heart to heart with her mother. It felt rushed and random because there was little time spent on the situation, so I wondered the purpose of it.
Basically…
I understand that The Queer Girl is Going to be Okay is supposed to be Dawns’ story, but I believe I would have liked it better if the subplots were given more time to exist or were nonexistent; let there be more focus on Dawn and her story. There would have been more of an impact of emotion if there was a better balance of attention given to the crew as individuals. Together I loved them but when they went on their own the story felt choppy and rushed.
Grateful for the trio, for the representation and I have hopes for future work by Dale Walls.

This was a beautiful story about platonic love and how important that is. I really enjoyed Dale’s writing style!

The book that makes you feel seen. It also is a bit of a repetition of usual stereotypes about LGBTQ community, but they are used well to show us the truth behind them. I feel this is the book most teenagers struggling to understand themselves need.

The Queer Girl is Going to be Okay is one of those books that sneaks up on you. There's no big flash, bang, pop to hit. It's quiet and cozy in an uncomfortable, truth-telling way. It hits you in the heart and makes you feel things you may have buried, or makes you realize things you never knew. It makes you feel seen and heard and wrapped in a big hug while someone whispers, "it's going to be okay.".

I loved this story full of the queer friends I never had, but needed, growing up. The book moves slowly, but it's worth it. The pace helps you to feel the lives of the characters moving around you. Beautifully written.

I don’t really know how to rate this book so I’m going for 3.5 (it’s kind of hard to rate it).
First of all, I want to thank NetGalley for allowing me to read this book in exchange for an honest review.
I am going to start strong by saying that yes, this book has flaws, you can’t deny it. But it is a really beautiful story with a lot of strengths like the characters. We can't not be attached to the 3 main characters and especially their friendship. They are pretty well developed, they are here for each other, and their flaws, their qualities. The way they act and talk felt real.
Also, I can't make a review of this book without mentioning how it talks of love and the different kinds of love. I think this is the best thing about this story, that it doesn't focus on romantic love, but also on friendship, platonic love, and family,...
I think the main problem that I had was with the storylines, there were a lot of them, maybe too much, and it felt that sometimes the author just saw that they did not have time to give them a perfect ending, and some of them felt rushed. Maybe, focusing on friendship, and the festival could have been great.
So yeah, not the perfect book, because you can feel that this is a debut novel, but I want to see what the author will write next. Because I think they will write beautiful stories.
Maybe a next favorite author...

First off, I absolutely love both the cover and the title of this book. The art is just SO GORGEOUS. Unfortunately, those were probably the most compelling elements of the book to me. The story follows three best friends in Houston and their various senior year challenges, with the sort of core being Dawn’s entry to a film competition, after which the book is named. Each of the three girls has a very distinct story, connected to the others only by virtue of their friendship, and unfortunately I think this made the pacing kind of weird. When one character was having a crucial story moment, it felt like the other storylines were just kind of dragging along for the sake of being there.
One thing I did really appreciate was how this book handled representation. It switched the stereotypical roles that the best friends would have played based on their race – the Black character was the one with strict parents who fixated on her grades, and the Asian character was the one with a fun single mom and bad grades. As for Dawn, I absolutely loved the way the book set up her being trans. For a lot of the book I was wondering why on earth this straight girl was so obsessed with queer love, and then it turned out that she was in fact queer. I really appreciate this because it does a good job of undermining certain people’s (myself maybe included) tendency to gatekeep queerness and accuse anyone who isn’t obviously queer of fetishization. Because while I do think it’s an issue, it’s not something you can call out an individual for because you never know what their experience has been and where they’re coming from. So from that perspective, the book did a really excellent job. I just don’t think it’s enough to make up for a plodding plot and writing that didn’t really grab me.

The queer girl is going to be okay is a novel I farelly enjoyed when I first started it but as I kept reading i felt a disconnect with the characters. Maybe I am just not a multiple pov type of person cause I think that was my problem with it. I wish i could have explored the characters and their storylines more, they did feel like real people to me and I found their struggles as queer teenagers very realistic.

I picked out this book for the title. When I was a teenager, all I wanted was to hear that everything was going to be okay, especially when I was struggling with and hiding my identity as a queer girl. I was ready for this book to bring up a lot of emotions, and it did, but most of all, I was left wishing that this was a story that I had when I was younger. I feel that many queer girls, especially queer girls of color, are going to be able to see themselves represented in this book, and I sincerely hope that it gets into the hands of those who need it.

Queer joy is at the heart of this work, and it is evident that it was written with a lot of love and care. The book splits its POV among a trio of best friends, each with their own distinctive passions, struggles, and complex relationships with loved ones, including family and romantic partners. Dawn, an aspiring filmmaker and trans girl, navigates caring for her father while she makes a documentary about queer love, even with her own complicated relationship with the subject. Then, there’s Edie, who’s religious and overbearing parents have led her to remain closeted, hiding her true self as well as her non-binary partner. Finally, there’s Georgia, who is falling in love for the first time, trying to get into college, and dealing with the complex feelings that come with a new partner in her mom’s life. With the POV switching between each character throughout the book, I felt that I got to know them all equally and was able to relate to each of their stories. However, the true gem of the novel is the main characters’ friendship at the center of the story, illustrating the power of queer platonic love and support. It is through this love that the story is made possible and so hopeful. By the end, despite the conflicts, each girl is excited about her future, and it made me smile because I was able to truly believe that the queer girl is going to be okay.

Dale Walls should be proud of this wonderful debut and the impact that it will have on the young, queer people who will read it.

Thank you to Net Galley and Levine Querido for providing me with an advanced reader’s copy. While I started reading this book as a digital ARC, I immediately bought the physical book upon its publication. I couldn't wait to have this story - not to mention its beautiful cover! - on my bookshelf.

The Queer Girl is Going to Be Okay’s strengths lie in its characterization. Edie, Dawn, and Georgia all communicate unique portions of the queer experience. Despite their closeness, each narrative feels fresh and does not overlap with the fellow plot threads.

Yet the writing of this book felt that it needed improvement. The writing can feel juvenile at times. I didn’t love the pacing of this story, and the frequent “show don’t tell” storytelling made it harder to connect with the characters.

Wow, I can't quite believe that this was a debut novel! I loved Walls' prose and especially the huge focus on friendships. While this book talks a lot about love, my favorite part was that platonic love was just as important as romantic. Dawn, Edie and Georgia's story invites you to reminisce and figure out what is important in life - the relationships you have and make while you grow up.
Beautifully written, with a hint for nostalgia, this will land right with teens for sure.

Man, this was such an emotional read. To read what each character had to deal with was so emotional and heartbreaking. I felt bad many time for all of the three main characters and what they had to go through. The book also showcased the power of having a good friendship with others, the type that will be there for you when you can't be there for yourself and ones that won't let you completely quit, no matter how hard situations might be. I hope the author features these characters in a future book. I would love to see what happens for them next.

NetGalley ARC Educator 550974


A refreshing LGBTQIA read, geared towards young adults and potentially middle school aged children. The story follows three friends as they navigate real life situations. There are no love scenes in this book, so there's no need for parents to be concerned.

- thank you to netgalley and the publisher for an arc to review!

- the story had a good plot, but i wish the execution was stronger and the characters had a little more development. however, it was still a decent read, and this book will definitely have its audience.

Yes the queer girl is going to be okay!! A perfect coming of age story. I love that this book was more focused on friendship rather than love. I think that it was unique and such a joy to read. I wish I had this book when I was younger and I REALLY wish I had friends like Dawn. 4 stars!

(PS this audiobook was really good!!)

This book follows a trio of queer girls who are best friends as they face their last semester of high school and everything that comes with it! They are:

Dawn, a filmmaker, who is making a documentary in hopes of winning the grand prize in a film festival - a scholarship to film school. She's a caretaker to her aging, depressed father, and is relying on financial help to allow her to leave the household, let alone go to school. She is dealing with a string of boys who don't respect her. She's also trans, which is "revealed" pretty far into the book, which I actually found to be a really natural and subtle introduction to that part of her character.

Georgia, who is trying to get off the waitlist at her one remaining college she didn't get rejected from. She wants to be a poet, but doesn't have the most confidence in her work at the beginning of the book. She's happily romantically involved with a girl named Jill. She lives with her mom, just the two of them, and when her mom's new boyfriend starts being very inappropriate with her, she's really torn on what to do.

Edie, who lives in a really traditional and religious household. She's dating Ben, a nonbinary person, and Ben wants to meet her parents, because they are kind of like, in love with Edie! But Edie really wants to keep her lives separate and it's definitely beginning to be detrimental on her relationship with Ben. She's good with school, almost too good, because it has resulted in her believing it's the only thing that makes her of value to her parents and is obsessed with their perception of her.

They support each other throughout all of the aforementioned issues and stressors, and they just reflect the queer love, platonic this time, that the book is themed around. The representation is beautiful, the friendships are so strong, the life circumstances are realistic, and yeah, I just recommend it!