Full Disclosure

Full Disclosure by Camryn Garrett was one of those books I’d had on my radar for awhile, but not so far up my radar I got it as a BOTM YA pick. In January though, I finally picked it up. Ultimately, it was a bit different than I expected, but a good book overall. There’s nothing wrong with the writing, but while the story feels important and the characters solid, the writing just didn’t move me forward as much as I wanted it to over the course of the first 200 pages. The last one hundred pages made the whole book worth it though!

Simone was born HIV+, and it’s something she has lived with her entire life. Adopted by her two dads, she’s been on medication for her entire life and knows how to take care of herself. But things get complicated when Simone starts at a new school, meets a cute boy, and starts receiving threatening notes in her locker that someone knows she is positive and is going to tell her boyfriend, Miles, unless she does first. Now, Simone must confront her feelings about disclosure to friends and loved ones knowing how it has hurt her in the past. To top it off, she’s interested in having sex soon, maybe, and she needs to figure out what that means with her status and her situation. This book is full of heart, there’s a lot of representation on the page (pretty much every letter of LGTBQ), and it’s a very sex-positive book in the best way. It talks about masturbation in a way that is relatable for teens and provides a great heroine in Simone who isn’t perfect but faces so much and comes out the bigger person from bullying and ostracization and the like. Oh, and this all happens while she is assistant directing a HS production of Rent. Perfect, right?

Like I said in the intro, this isn’t the fasted paced book, but it’s good. The romance is cute enough, but that wasn’t really what drew me in–it was the balancing of the different worlds Simone occupies and how she handles that when someone is threatening to out her status. The book is also super impressive since Garrett wrote it in HS and sold it at 17. It’s a good contemporary, and I think it is important. Having a black, female protagonist like Simone will do so much good for people. I just thought the book wasn’t paced perfectly. Oh well, I still read it and enjoyed it, it just took longer than I thought it would. I’ll be interested to see what this author does next.