TWIRL

A YA novel depicts the difficulties of a budding queer romance even in the most accepting of environments.

Danny Wheeler-Hall is a senior at the Bay Area East Valley High School, where he and his best friends dedicate their energies to advancing their beloved color guard team. At the start of Peeples’ novel, everyone’s attention is on the “brrrap” sound coming from Danny’s phone as his queer dating app QTIE gets several notifications. Danny’s world is a progressive one: He has two gay dads and supportive friends, both gay and straight, who have nothing bad to say about him using the app. They’re all just curious to see what kind of photographs Danny received. This time, though, it might be much more than hooking up: Danny has been matched with “the winter guard equivalent of a rock star” from the famous team at neighboring Landon High School, Ethan Decker. Alternating between Danny’s and Ethan’s first-person perspectives, the book shows how giddy and nervous both boys are. The tension builds to a first date that starts out uneasy, but ends with tender kisses as the teens share their biggest challenges. Ethan’s parents are quick to pressure him—excelling at color guard being the most important thing in their house—and Danny is hiding from his adopted dads that he’s trying to track down his birth mother. Both boys leave their first date feeling like their insides are vibrating “like a guitar string.” Yet they also underestimate how difficult it will be when their two schools face off in a color guard competition. As tensions mount, their romance is off to a rocky start, but both teens try to reflect on what they really want.

Peeples’ novel is immediately refreshing in that its queer characters don’t face the adversity readers expect from a teen gay romance. By placing the boys in such a progressive environment, the author can focus on telling a genuinely sweet and tender story, exploring the teens’ emotions as they navigate the awkwardness of young love. The tale is notably chaste, and at times confusingly so. With so much adult language and themes that target mature teen readers, actual sex comes up surprisingly little. The central conflict, stemming from a color guard competition, also feels too slight at first. But Peeples cleverly redirects attention to the boys’ emotional lives and the way stress causes them to lash out, leading to fights that feel authentic. Along the same lines, the teens’ eventual confrontations with their parents deliver the most stirring moments and form the novel’s true heart. Still, the author’s use of social media vocabulary can feel forced, as if Peeples is trying too hard to capture contemporary teen voices. Similarly, some characters come across as overly eager to articulate progressive ideals. (When one of Danny’s pals, the hilarious Sanjay, quips at someone, “Did you memorize the GLAAD website again or something?,” it feels like a critique that could apply to all of the main players at different points.) But overall, the story serves the warm, accepting world Peeples is building, where two gay teens can safely experience the highs and lows of first love and the complex joy of connecting with family.

This moving queer teen romance is set in a hopeful world that’s hard to resist.