Hey Avril Lavigne, changed your lyrics a little …
Wes was a punk
Tris did ballet
What more can I say?

Wes was a skater boy
Tris said, "Love to know you, boy"
And wanted Wes to show him more
But Wes was scared as hell
Didn’t think he could tell
Never opened himself this way

Skater Boy starts with an author’s note, and it immediately put a smile on my face. I loved the part about changing the lyrics of songs.

I actually hated Wes in the first chapter. According to the blurb, he’s a bad boy, and I thought, bad boy? He’s a downright bully! Teens who love Metallica don’t need to be bullies or even bad boys! But while reading, I found out Skater Boy is a great story of character growth. Wes is full of anger and a bully on the outside, and a teen full of fears and traumas on the inside. Meeting Tristan made Wes’ heart jump up, and from that moment, the smile on my face reappeared.

Skater Boy is about how anger makes you a man. Boys should man up, right? Be brawny. Fight back. Because anger makes you masculine, and other emotions are not allowed. They make you less manly, maybe even feminine. Because that’s what we’re taught. Skater Boy is about how labels can help us or make us struggle. It’s about how to be who you want to be without being pushed into a box. And in the end, it’s about learning to love yourself. Nothing else matters.

And have you seen the gorgeous cover? So fitting to the story!

Wes is a boy
And Tris is one too
Can I make it any more obvious?
They are in love
Haven’t you heard?
How they rock each other’s world

I received an ARC from Soho Teen and Edelweiss in exchange for an honest review.

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4 Stars

Anthony Nerada’s debut novel, Skater Boy, is a rousing gem of a book, not to be missed by lovers of queer YA fiction.

This contemporary story, featuring LGBT characters and universally relatable coming-of-age themes, follows Wes, an angry baby-gay hero, with a bad attitude and a huge chip on his shoulder, as he experiences a true turning point in his young life, after his future gets put into question by a school counsellor and he’s forced to start thinking about his behaviour and treatment of others, and what he actually wants to do with his life.

Wes’s story is rife with teen-angst, youthful mistakes, hard-fought personal growth, and, of course, the highs and lows of first love.

This book spoke to my teenage, pop-punk loving heart. It sparked a deep sense of nostalgia and yearning for my lost youth. It took me back to a time when I was moody and broody and talked back just to get a reaction, desperate to work out who I was, what I d, and what I wanted from my life. It reminded me of first crushes and a future that was wide-open with possibilities—but hella scary for how BIG those possibilities seemed for my small life.

It was an emotionally charged read, that I wish I could have read when I was seventeen, busy angsting over literally everything.

The story was so remarkable in its telling, I’m kind of shocked stupid that Nerada is a first-time author, because it seems unfair to be this good this soon in one’s writing career. The boy's got mad skills and praise be for it!

If you enjoy authors Adam Silvera, Adib Khorram, David Levithan, Kacen Callender, or Mason Deaver, you should give this book your consideration, because I’m pretty sure Anthony Nerada is about to bust the LGBT YA doors down with his debut and cement his name amongst some of the best, given the chance.


***A special thanks to the author for graciously gifting me an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.arc high-school lgbt ...more57 s10 comments Anthony NeradaAuthor 2 books134

Is anyone surprised I’m here giving my own book 5 stars? No, not really, but I'm going to do it anyway (lol).

Skater Boy was born out of a desire to highlight a queer experience that is rarely told, from a character who is unapologetically more grumpy than sunshine. Wesley "Big Mac" Mackenzie is not for the faint of heart. He's in your face, he's rough around the edges, and he's filled with an anger he doesn't quite know how to express (because "real" men don't talk about their feelings, right?). In Wes, perhaps above all else, I wanted to show readers that there is no right way of being gay. We can be angry as hell, just as much as we can be kind and caring. In telling this story, I hope I did Wes (and all the messy, morally gray queers out there who have yet to find themselves) proud.

And while Skater Boy does loosely pay tribute to the classic pop-punk anthem we all know and love, I want to believe it is so much more than that. This story is about breaking down the labels that confine you and learning to love yourself exactly as you are, but it's also about self-acceptance and friendship and giving yourself grace when the world might seem against you.

I wholeheartedly understand that Skater Boy may not be for everyone, so please be aware of the following content warnings and make sure to always protect yourself, and your reading experience:
- Explicit language
- Bullying
- Alcoholism
- Underage drinking
- Racism (as experienced by a Black love interest)
- Past domestic abuse
- Childhood trauma35 s Amina 696 464

? 4 stars ?

“I’m so tired of being someone I’m not.”

At the heart of it, Anthony Nerada's debut novel Skater Boy is a deeply honest and vivid look about self-discovery, self-healing and self-learning on how we can choose to be better people, without losing the part of ourselves that defines who we are. It is a reflective look at how we perceive ourselves and in what light we want others to also view us.

Wes was a believable and very relatable character; he has the makings of a bad boy - a bully at times with violent displaced rage, chilling away time by either skateboarding or smoking joints with his close friends - no plans for himself for the future.
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