MESSY PERFECT

To support her former best friend at their Catholic high school, a closeted queer teen in Canada starts a club for LGBTQ+ students.

Cassie Perera and Ben Yang were best friends until sixth grade when, in a moment of fear and panic and hoping to deflect the homophobic bullying of racist classmates at their Catholic school, Cassie betrayed Ben. They see each other for the first time in years at the start of 11th grade when Ben, back from the National Ballet School in Toronto, arrives at St. Luke’s. Cassie is determined to atone for her actions. After Cassie meets the diverse members of a local public school’s Gender and Sexuality Alliance, she decides that forming an underground partnership to create a safe space for queer kids at St. Luke’s is the perfect way to show Ben that she’s changed. But navigating school, church, her Sri Lankan immigrant parents’ expectations, and the confusing mess of feelings for girls that she’s tried to push away for years tests her anxious desire to be perfect. Fast-paced and heartfelt, Boteju’s latest examines the intersection of queerness and Catholicism with nuance and compassion while demonstrating the need for safe spaces in schools so that kids can be themselves.

A sweet, emotional read affirming those who struggle to find a place within religions that profess to hate who they are.