Kacen Callender is originally from Saint Thomas in the US Virgin Islands. Kacen has a BA from Sarah Lawrence College and an MFA from the New School's writing for children program. They are also the author of the young adult novel This Is Kind of an Epic Love Story and the middle grade novels King and the Dragonflies and Hurricane child, winner of the Stonewall Book Award and the Lambda Literary Award. They can be found online at www.kacencallender.com, and on Twitter.
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.
I've been falling in love with young adult all over again this year, and this novel has been no different. What I loved about Felix Ever After was the way that Callender does not try to hide or diminish the specific complexities of what it's like to be a young adult. Felix, Ezra, and the gang run around the city, make some bad choices and some great art, and speak to one another gently and firmly about important topics that we need language for. When you're a teenager, you're forever questioning—Felix's questions are about love, and gender identity, questions of a young adult that don't get enough space in the genre. And even on top of that, Callender doesn't dismiss the other concerns of young adults: their relationships with their parents and their privileges, what friendships are, how to address bullies, and how to love oneself. All of these topics (and more, certainly) are addressed in this novel. It seems like a lot to handle, but it just goes to show how truthfully Callender portrays adolescence in Felix's story.
I love that this story takes place in New York City, in the summer, at an arts school. I feel like the plot was tied very specifically to these three elements, and the entire time I was reading I felt like I was in the New York heat, standing right beside Felix as he figures out his portraits, and could have run into any of these characters on the trains. Felix's story felt very, very real because it was grounded not just in the thematic elements (what I mentioned above) but also because it was grounded deeply into New York City culture. Not only did I learn about Felix's struggles with his gender identity, but also the struggles of living in a dynamic city such as New York, one where privilege and disadvantage wage their wars on the streets, where around every corner there's both acceptance and rejection of all kinds. In a way, that's exactly what Felix's story was like, too: trying to determine where the acceptance would be, and how to move forward if it didn't exist. Quite simply, there was no other place this story could have happened if not in New York City, and that's a testament to really strong writing.
One of the major "conceits" you could say of the novel was that Felix Love has never been in love—and the irony is not lost on Felix. A bit corny, sure, but so wholesome and bighearted that I was tied to the book's outcome from the start. As Felix navigates who he is, he's also trying to figure out what love looks like to him, and if he's worthy of it. Which, of course he is! But the journey to getting there was so important. It took him down some unnavigable paths, and the love triangle that ensues is full of hijinks before it can be resolved. What I loved incredibly about the love triangle between Felix, Ezra, and Declan was that it was a genuine love triangle: Felix has feelings for both of them; Ezra had feelings for Declan but then fell in love with Felix; and Declan loved Ezra but now has feelings for Felix. Each of the three characters were intertwined with one another, and their feelings overlapped and made choices so incredibly difficult. We see love angles a lot in young adult—where one character has feelings for two characters, but those two characters are unrelated or enemies, or don't have feelings for one another—and so Callender incorporating a genuine love triangle is great work for a genre that needs this wake-up call. That people are more complicated than we want to think, and that love especially is super complicated. This love triangle was one of the best ways to show it.
Felix is also trying to balance his love and appreciation of his father with his frustrations for how his father treats him. Family isn't a huge part of the book, but it is a huge part of Felix's life. While Felix does have a found family with his friends, he's still working through feelings of acceptance and rejection among his parents. One of those feelings doesn't get resolved until Felix decides that he needs to love who he is, regardless of what anyone else thinks. It breaks my heart that his mom would abandon Felix like that, but the reality is that a lot of queer people probably have similar experiences that also remain unsolved in their lives. On the other hand, Felix's dad isn't perfect, but he's trying. That much is evident every time Felix reflects on how his dad treats him, and is certainly evident by the time Felix and his dad get a chance to sit down and talk about everything. Relationships with parents can be challenging, and certainly even more so for people in the LGBTQ+ community. Callender took great care in portraying the nuances of those relationships in the depiction between Felix and his parents, which is just yet another reason why Felix Ever After is such a wonderful, necessary read.
For more Kacen Callender, go online at www.kacencallender.com, or find them on Twitter.
*This review can also be found on my Goodreads page*
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