3.5 stars.The story of a boy coming to accept his sexuality while most of his friend are homophobic. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a story we've all heard before. Still the author pulled it off well with an amazing cast of characters and a few new twists. The characters and events all seemed real and never stereotypical. I'd recommend it to all teenagers of all different sexual orientations just as long as they don't mind reading some rather graphic sex scenes. David is on his school's cross-country team. All is well until his best friend comes out to him and David realizes that he has a crush on a teammate. David does everything he can think of to deny his orientation: he begins to date a girl, he snaps a rubber band on his wrist whenever he has a thought about a guy, but the feelings don't disappear. At the end of the novel, David finally comes to terms with his orientation and apologizes to his best friend for avoiding him.I can appreciate David's reaction to his friend's coming out, and I can understand his difficulties accepting his orientation. However, the sexual scenes in this book are quite graphic, more so than I think is entirely necessary to benefit the plot or develop the characters. Because of this, I recommend approaching this book with extreme caution. There are other, better novels to read, folks.
