>>1877786Thank you (and the other anons who replied) for the suggestions. I'll look into them
I am amazed, and depressed, that there are a shortage of first love books. You'd think it would be a rich area: YA first loves in the spirit of Annie on My Mind. I mean we're fucking half way through the 2010s for christ sake and AoMM was published in what, 1982? Surely people can enjoy a romance between people irrespective of their genders.
Surely we can get contemporary books like AoMM, with less angst on account of this being the 2010s and no school is going to give you shit here (can't speak for those of you over the pond of course) for being gay. Except maybe some really repressed public schools. And then it would be clearly illegal, and the parents would probably have the cash to push it legally. And even the tabloids would be on the right side, though they would of course sensationalise the whole thing and it'd be front page if the legal stuff had to go far because the school didn't just settle.
And the other thing is how most of these books seems to be crowded off in some fucking LGBT category. Aren't these people human as much as anyone else? It's fiction, so put it in the fucking fiction section. If you can group it because it's specifically romance, or young adult, put it in those sections but that's it.
Oh, I await the day when I can pick up a book off a bookshelf in a bookshop and not already know that the protagonist is gay, bi, or trans, because it's been grouped into some fucking fringe section. And then it's just there, and not played out for - I don't know - to boost the diversity quota or something. Or treated like it has to be justified all the time.
Like I said, 2010s.
But I digress.
