Sure, I guess there’s always a little something tethering you to the people you’ve grown up with but he was horrible, and Pen just sat there and took it. He’s manipulative, and emotionally abusive, and I just plain do not understand why she was friends with him for so long.

The main thing I didn’t love about Girl Mans Up was Pen’s relationship with her best friend, Colby. There were a few passages and phrases that I think could have been worded better, but maybe they were like that because Pen didn’t really have the words to describe her own sense of identity. I feel like there could have been a much greater exploration of gender identity and expression, and how the two of them are not synonymous.

At times, however, I wanted more from this. It breaks down the walls of the gender binary, and Pen is just Pen, who still identifies as a girl but dresses and wants to be treated like a boy. On the one hand, I loved the nuanced look at gender that Girl Mans Up provides. I’m not really entirely sure how I feel about Girl Mans Up. Lucky for Pen-she’s met Blake-also a gamer, and a girl who Pen says “wins everything.” Can Pen manage to respect Colby’s “loyalty code” even though his jealousy of her has become cruel and toxic? Pen has to man up and figure it out.

Her pal Colby, from two doors down, gave Pen respect from the first time he met her playing hockey when they were small, but Colby has become conflicted about Pen’s value to him, and he’s really nasty. Pen is used to catching hell for looking and acting like a boy-especially from her parents-but in the Canadian suburbs where she lives, there’s nowhere to escape to. Mistaken for a boy in restaurants, bathrooms and everywhere else-all she wants is to be the kind of girl she is. Pen Oliviera is sort of chunky, an amazing gamer and a girl. And then one day she meets Blake, and little by little, it all begins to make sense. Pen is only comfortable dressing like a boy, but it’s confusing to her friends and unacceptable to her family. Like Julie Anne Peters’ Keeping You a Secret, Girl Mans Up is a totally engrossing portrayal of a gay teen’s coming of age. How: A copy of this novel was provided by HarperCollins for review via Edelweiss.

Girl Mans Up by M.E. Girard