Felix Ever After

By: Kacen Callender

Narrated by: Logan Rozos

Length: 8 hrs and 24 mins

Publisher's summary

A Stonewall Honor Book * A Time Magazine Best YA Book of All Time

From Stonewall and Lambda Award-winning author Kacen Callender comes a revelatory YA novel about a transgender teen grappling with identity and self-discovery while falling in love for the first time.

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.

"Felix is attending an ultracompetitive arts summer program to have a better shot at a full scholarship to Brown when someone posts Felix’s dead name beside photos of him, pre-transition, in the school’s lobby. Felix’s plot to get revenge throws him onto the path of love and self-discovery." (Publishers Weekly, "An Anti-Racist Children's and YA Reading List")

©2020 Kacen Callender (P)2020 HarperCollins Publishers

Cliche Ever After (But Still Worth a Listen!)

Small spoilers!

This really is a great coming of age type story.

Transgender Felix deals with his own personal identify crisis, while being outed with his birth identity to his whole school, all while desperately wanting to fall in love... never realizing his best friend is secretly pining for him.

The two friends do weird things. Like snuggle up in bed together. And I'm not talking about sharing a bed with your bestie. This is full on tangle of limbs, we can't even tell who the big spoon or the little spoon is anymore type of snuggling. This is when they are just "friends".

I don't know. The idea of that friendship turning in to something more is what bothered me most about the book. Too cliche for a story that really had a promising plot.

Definitely worth a listen, extremely well narrated by Logan Rozos, and well written as well. The audio production had a few errors that I noticed of lines being repeated. Now the author wrote many lines in the book to be repeated, but the production had them repeated in a way that was clearly not the intent. That took me out of the story at those moments because I had to rewind to see if I had just stopped paying attention or there really were errors!

Listen now!

I loved this book! It's a great coming of age, love, and finding one's self journey. I love reading stories that I can relate to in a less abstract way. Its not a fantasy but a story of how life is and being a teenager is hard. Add on everything Felix is dealing with and wow! Everyone should read this story rather they are in the LGBTQI+ community or not.

Powerful LGBT Story

I loved this book! The narrator was fantastic. It is such an important story. Love.

Love it

I loved listening to this book about Felix figuring out who he is & how to discover what love feels like.

Perfectly imperfect: lucky & Happy

I suggested this book for book club for Pride month. I’m so glad we chose it. I thoroughly enjoyed the story and it was a great learning experience for me. No greater way to say love is love.
Wonderfully narrated as well.

LOVE this Book!!!

This NEEDS to be required reading in high school ASAP!!! I am not part of the LGBTQ+ community but I have always been an ally all the way back since I was a teenager back in the 1990s in an all-girls Catholic School where more education & representation was needed everywhere. I have Nieces and preteen/teen cousins who I just gifted this book to (and a couple other books) I know we are still not where we need to be in way to many areas but compared to 20 years ago we are so much better it makes my heart happy!

The perfect leap of faith

Admittedly, this isn't my normal genre, but lately, I've been choosing books that have a bit more romance to them. I think this one was one of the Deals and it fit my current vibe so I went for it. I don't know much about the trans movement other than the community deals with more than it's fair share of discrimination and horrific violence, especially in communities of color. I chose this book to educate myself more from an emotional viewpoint than a clinical news story. I wanted the human perspective and what better way to do that than through a high school teenager. :)

What I loved about the story is that it attempted to both educate and entertain, both of which were a success. Sure there were some choices that weren't too solid, but nothing so serious to take away from the heart of the story which was first love and self-love. I think the best part about the book is that it explored many real-life topics in a place without violence or any other overt modern-day discrimination. The author chose to use an incident to illustrate in a subtle way a type of bigotry. What was great about it is that it wasn't all consuming.

Enjoy this book for what it is and you'll be taken to a place we all wish we could live, where innocence and self-discovery begin.

Emotive, educational story

I thoroughly enjoyed this audiobook. We need more stories about young trans folks, and about supportive friends and families. This story need let up on hope, even as it included sad and infuriating incidents. There is a lot that can be learned from this story, and I would like to see it in film. The narration is good.

Feelings

This book was very relateable to me as a queer trans guy. Sometimes it was definitely cheesy, but I have to admit I love cheesy parts of stories.

The characters seemed very real, there was a perfect ratio of angst to happiness.

Definitely recommend.

coming of age done so well

loved how the conversations and emotions felt so real. loved every minute of it!