None of the Above. Rating: Divine. (Guest post by Ashley S.)

Reader,

I must once more go underground - those state troopers just don't give up! - so I again reached out to that friend of a friend of an old colleague of an acquaintance of the doorman who used to be my best (only) friend at the company, before the building mysteriously burned down. Her name is Ashley and she is a delightful person with a passion for reading (and from what I have been told, writing) excellent Young Adult fiction. While I am traveling, she has agreed to be a guest reviewer on Spoilers. I've added a few comments, in italics. I hope she doesn't mind.
Ashley is a delight to work with and if The Silent Fist ever approaches her in any way, they should be assured that I will know. And there will be consequences. Don't even try it, gentlemen.

The below review is cross-posted to Ashley's blog. Thank you for your help, Ashley.

-A

None of the Above by I. W. Gregorio

Kristin Lattimer has a tight group of friends, a loving boyfriend, and (as of the night of the homecoming dance) is homecoming queen. She’s a star hurdler with a college scholarship; she’s sweet, loyal, and although her mother’s death from cervical cancer has rocked her family, she has a loving father. Krissy is happy and ready to take the next step with her boyfriend, Sam, but their first time reveals that something is seriously wrong.

A visit to the doctor explains everything: she’s intersex.

For those who are unfamiliar, (as I was going into this book), this means she’s outwardly and physically a female but she is inwardly… well, both. She even has “boy parts”.

That’s difficult enough to deal with, as any discovery a teenage girl may make about herself. But then her secret is revealed to her entire school.

As you could guess, this jumbles Krissy’s life even more, pieces of her life tossed into the air like balls (hah!) some terrible person is juggling while laughing maniacally. In fact, as I was reading I sometimes felt such intense pain for her. Everything goes to crap -- all those beautiful things from her life? Down the toilet. It solidified how horrifying high school can really be.

In the wake of this tragic reveal (to be clear, the reveal of her diagnosis to her student body before she is ready and without her permission, not her diagnosis itself), the characters in this book do shine. Her father is a solid rock, gathering information like a mad man to help himself (and Krissy) deal with her diagnosis and her new body and shine new light that they both need. Krissy does specify that this is how he copes but I love it -- it gives the reader more information about interesx and shows how beautiful their tight little family is. Her old friend turned renewed friend, Darren, accepts her as she is and helps her get back on track with running and grounds her. She reaches out to a new AIS (Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome) support group that helps to solidify what she believes to be true about herself: she is a woman.

In fact, the characters that make up Krissy’s support system are one of the things I loved most about this book. It would be easy to have Krissy cave into herself (and she does momentarily), but Gregorio creates a lovely myriad of fleshed-out characters who add a bunch of ways to react to Krissy’s diagnosis. I felt like I had a reactionary flush with this: I saw every kind of response to her news and felt like they were all honest. Even the bad ones, because of course there would be bad ones, especially in high school. [This plot sounds like my high school worst nightmare come true: having a very personal (if not terrible) secret that is suddenly revealed. Of course, I now have many more secrets, of much higher consequence; and yet this plot makes my stomach knot far more severely than the idea of my own secrets being brought to light. -A]

On top of the characters (including Krissy, who is a great, well rounded protagonist) I liked how naturally this book educated me on the subject of being intersex. It’s kind of how I felt about Adam by Ariel Schrag and being trans, but I liked Gregorio’s way better: it was happening directly to the main character and there was a realistic variety of characters to bounce reactions off of. Gregorio used the narrative to educate and it is clear that she did her research and cared about portraying this subject in a fantastic way.

None of the Above helped educate me, captivated me, and kept me cheering along with Krissy’s amazing group of friends and supporters. It grounded me and raised awareness while telling a superb story.

Spoilers

There’s not much to spoil here, but there are a few tidbits to share for the curious and hopeful. There’s a lot of miscommunication with Krissy and her two friends, Faith and Vee, about how the news of Krissy’s diagnosis gets out. In the end it turns out the more obvious choice, Vee, didn’t actually leak the information, but it was her more innocent and bubbly buddy, Faith. By the time Krissy finds out, it is easy for her to forgive Faith and the three girls do get their groove back by the end of the book.

As if it wasn’t obvious by the fallout from her high school, Sam goes ballistic on her when he finds out about his girlfriend “being a man.” It’s tough to hear him talk to her the way he does, especially when Sam is introduced thus far as being understanding and sweet (he doesn’t pressure her to have sex and is very considerate when their first time goes wrong). [I appreciate this notion - a person doesn't have to be innately bad all the time in order to sometimes do villainous and insensitive things. -A] He never comes fully around but romance isn’t far for Krissy -- Darren is there to kiss her in the end and make all our hearts beat faster when he tells Krissy, “If there’s one thing I learned from my dad leaving my mom, it’s that love isn’t a choice. You fall for the person, not their chromosomes.”

In the end, the crumbling ruins of the hard, terrible way her high school reacted to her diagnosis clears away to make room for Krissy to love herself for who she truly is and she has the support of maybe only a few, but the biggest support she can ask for is from those she loves - and most of all, herself.

Rating: Divine