What I Like About Felix Ever After by Kacen Callender

Discovering one’s self can be a mess and this book speaks true to it.

Title: Felix Ever After
Author: Kacen Calender
Published May 5th 2020 by Balzer + Bray
368 pages

CW: homophobia, transphobia, racism, parental abuse and neglect, frequent underage drug and alcohol use, ableist language, deadnaming, public outing, misgendering (unintentional & intentional), and online harassment.

Synopsis

From Stonewall and Lambda Award-winning author Kacen Callender comes a revelatory YA novel about a transgender teen grappling with identity and self-discovery while falling in love for the first time.

Felix Love has never been in love—and, yes, he’s painfully aware of the irony. He desperately wants to know what it’s like and why it seems so easy for everyone but him to find someone. What’s worse is that, even though he is proud of his identity, Felix also secretly fears that he’s one marginalization too many—Black, queer, and transgender—to ever get his own happily-ever-after.

When an anonymous student begins sending him transphobic messages—after publicly posting Felix’s deadname alongside images of him before he transitioned—Felix comes up with a plan for revenge. What he didn’t count on: his catfish scenario landing him in a quasi–love triangle….

But as he navigates his complicated feelings, Felix begins a journey of questioning and self-discovery that helps redefine his most important relationship: how he feels about himself.

Felix Ever After is an honest and layered story about identity, falling in love, and recognizing the love you deserve.

photo by @titoallenph

Review

I read this book as part of our book club, Bibliophile Guild PH, Book of The Month pick for June—which is #PrideMonth. I love how this book tackles sexual orientation, gender identity, and expression (SOGIE) deeply and raw. There are so many passages wherein the author speaks about trangenderism and there are multiple characters who are queer. I can say that this book is the perfect choice to read for the Pride Month.

Felix Love is a very important character whose voice needs to be amplified. The main character, Felix, is a Black trans queer artist on his way to college. This book is such a game-changer in YA literature as it delves deeply about SOGIE. We see the struggles of Felix because of his identity—which we should be learning more about. His voice needs to be amplified to let the people know and be educated about the struggles of people who identify just like who Felix is.

“I’m not flaunting anything. I’m just existing. This is me. I can’t hide myself. I can’t disappear. And even if I could, I don’t fucking want to. I have the same right to be here. I have the same right to exist.”
― Kacen Callender, Felix Ever After

It is about self-discovery and it shows how messy one’s journey undergoing to it. Even though Felix has transitioned already, he still had questions about his identity. The process of Felix in finding his true self is a huge part of this book. We get to see how he deals with the questions and doubts about his life and how his friends and family react to it. Discovering one’s self can be a mess and this book speaks true to it—how much Felix had to research about the different sexual orientation terminologies he needs to learn, attending gender group discussions, making impulsive choices just for the sake of knowing himself, losing friends who aren’t as genuine as he thought, and he may or may not had fall in love with one of his enemies. It’s the type of mess that I enjoy basking in.

“It’s easier, sometimes, to love when you know it’s a love you can’t have.”
― Kacen Callender, Felix Ever After

The authenticity of the portrayal of the society that we live in. There are multiple occasions when Felix experience being harassed because of his sexuality and race. He was deadnamed, called misogynist because of being trans, given less opportunity, and people around him didn’t accept who he truly is. This book shows how cruel and oppressive the society can be to the people who doesn’t conform to heteronormative norm. Despite that, the story still gave a hopeful message that even though Black and queer people experience hardships from the ones around them, there are always people who will be kind, treat them equally, and accept them for who they are—that there is a progressive side of the society and that people are slowly becoming more accepting, especially our family, if people continue to educate them and given enough time to understand. Kacen Callender didn’t fail to get that message across for the readers to know.

“Even if a creator made a character to be straight, they put those characters out into the world, right? So those characters are mine now. And I say that Steve and Bucky are gay as hell.”
― Kacen Callender, Felix Ever After

About The Author

Born and raised in St. Thomas of the US Virgin Islands, Kacen Callender is the award-winning author of the middle-grade novels Hurricane Child and King and the Dragonflies, the young-adult novels This Is Kind of an Epic Love Story and Felix Ever After, and the adult novel Queen of the Conquered. 

Kacen was previously an Associate Editor of Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, an imprint of Hachette Book Group, where they acquired and edited novels including Tyler Johnson Was Here by Jay Coles, the New York Times bestseller Internment by Samira Ahmed, and the Stonewall Honor award-winning novel Ivy Aberdeen’s Letter to the World by Ashley Herring Blake.

https://www.kacencallender.com/

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