Sassy & Sweet

A “reverse Parent Trap” with a twist, Greg Howard’s Social Intercourse was fresh, fun, and funny, with moments that made me literally LOL (not an easy feat when you’re reading at 2:30 in the morning with a sleeping boyfriend next to you).

Though the debut novel was not without its flaws, I enjoyed it, and, from a teacher’s point of view, I think it has the potential to start some worthwhile conversations among teen readers.

Social Intercourse is told through the alternating narration of Beckett Gaines, one of few openly gay teens at his South Carolina HS, and Jaxon Parker, the school’s star football player and ladies man extraordinaire. Beck is a Golden Girls-obsessed, choir-singing, often sassy, and proud gay teen while Jax’s reputation is built on the points he’s scored on the field and the ladies he’s scored before and after games.

The two boys form a somewhat unlikely alliance when their parents start to date each other. Instead of trying to push their families together, they try to tear them apart, so they can go back to the safe lives that they knew before. During this scheming, the boys become closer, and here is where things get (even more) complicated.

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I liked Howard's characters; although their surfaces might seem familiar- sometimes tiptoeing the line into a familiar archetype- there's more to each of the boys than meets the eye.

Beck isn’t just the sassy gay friend who grabs the spotlight when he has a witty one-liner; he’s someone who cares about his best friend, who gets angry at her mother’s mistreatment of her and tries to help her see that she’s more than the negativity that’s been drilled into her head. He’s someone who picked his father up off the ground and became the very necessary adult after his mother left him and his father behind. Beck makes some selfish mistakes, but he wants to protect his father above everything else...and, okay, himself too (honestly not surprising because he IS just a teen).

Beck doesn't act out of viciousness, he's a kid whose life, the one he worked hard to get back on track, is starting to slip beyond his control.

Despite his mistakes, I find him likable enough to forgive him.

Underneath Jax’s hetero jock exterior, he’s a sweet kid. He loves his two moms who saved him from a broken and abusive home, and, similar to Beck, his actions are driven by the desperate wish to keep his “forever home” from becoming broken as well.

In the midst of his mothers’ separation, Jax is also struggling with his own personal drama- he’s been questioning the core of heterosexual jock that his entire social life has been built on.

Great Potential...

Readers who like a little messy YA romance will definitely get that in spades- Beck and Jax’s interactions are funny, awkward, and sometimes exactly as confrontational as they need to be.

Through them, readers can start up conversations about the role they should play when someone is being bullied or abused; whether being that simple bystander who does nothing, or that power player who chooses to take a backseat, can sometimes be more hurtful than the ones spewing hateful words or doing hateful things.

I think it’s vitally important that children and teens have those conversations, that they are forced to take a hard look at their own seemingly harmless choices as Jax and Beck are both forced to when they look at how they’ve dealt with each other and how they’ve dealt with their parents.

Overall, I stand by my starting thoughts- I genuinely liked this book. Is it perfection? No, but I think there’s a lot of valuable story here, and enough fun, awkwardness, and sass to keep readers hooked.

I would definitely check out more books by Greg Howard in the future.

In the meantime, while I'm eagerly awaiting his next book, you can check out Social Intercourse for yourself in less than a month:

https://www.amazon.com/Social-Intercourse-Greg-Howard-ebook/dp/B075RRNGCS/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1525653519&sr=8-1