It's like, we went out of our way with the Mr. It's just odd that we spent the entire book talking about making space for and accepting people who don't fit into labels around cliques or sexuality so that they can feel like full human beings, but we couldn't find any space for the one black kid in junior year other than to use him as a plot device for our two white characters to forge a relationship over his exit now that his bed next to Ben is empty which gives us a chance to get closer to our love interest.
Bryce is brought up as a very interesting character who suffers from depression and is one of the few black students in a mostly-white school, yet he exeunts stage left very early and both his race and character are largely irrelevant to the remaining story aside from 2 short scenes which leaves a lot of room for narration, introspection, and conversation unfulfilled in my opinion. The relationship with Ben and where it leads is totally unresolved as is the potential for conflict and growth with the school's homophobic atmosphere and jocks. The only sexual experience with Ben gets yada yada'd "I mentioned the bisque", which, aside from two kisses, is the only physical romance we get. I came into being pansexual as a straight-presenting cis man in my later twenties so perhaps I am not the target audience for a coming-of-age story of a teenager who only fancies men, so if that is you, I hope this rings much more true for you, but definitely don't go into this expecting a gay romance Toby, Alby, and Ben are all great characters that we don't get to see enough of.
After thinking about it, my disappointment is because this is not even slightly trying to be a romance novel and shouldn't have been marketed as such because this is a story about how Rafe comes to terms with both being gay and how people and the world change to respond to that fact. I grabbed this with my monthly credits as 1) a romance novel, 2) a queer romance novel and came out of the experience pretty disappointed.
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