Odd One Out by Nic Stone

Odd One Out is a unique take on the triangle trope, with the important message that it is okay to question your sexual identity and the label you have given yourself to try and find ways to feel comfortable with yourself, your feelings and your values. It is a story that is so real, awkward, funny and as messy as teenage life is when you’re questioning yourself and your sexuality.

The book follows the three teenagers Courtney, Jupiter and Rae, and is divided into three sections, one for each different character. Courtney is a straight black boy in love with his best friend, even though he knows she will never feel the same way because she’s a lesbian. Rae is a biracial Irish/Korean new girl at school, a people-please and apparently, not as straight as she thought. Jupiter is a biracial black girl who has two dads and a proud lesbian, as well as Courtney’s best friend and completely obliviate to his feelings.
 
I don’t think I’ve ever read anything similar, with these three blocks instead of alternating POVs, but I liked it. Especially Courtney’s parts, he was definitely my favorite character and voice in the book, I really got him. More than I did the girls. I think that having two questioning queer people in one book might have been a bit too much, in the end it all got a little too messy.

Reading this book was such a rollercoaster of rooting for the characters one second, then really disagreeing with their choices the next. But I feel like that was kind of the point and that the messiness was what made this book so unique and made it feel real. Life is messy and as a teenager you should be allowed to be messy and make bad decisions in order to figure out who you are and where and how you fit into the world. I really appreciated the talk about labels that Nic Stone added to the story in the end. It’s an important discussion to have and to realise that labels can change and it can be scary to change them and question who you are.

My main problem (and the reason why I only rated this book 3 stars) wasn’t that the characters were questioning their sexuality and changing labels, it was how the changes were portraited. I did not appreciate the way that Jupiter discovered that she was bisexual, it all left a stale after-taste, almost as if she was “fixed” by having sex with a boy. I also did not appreciate the way she herself pretty much disregarded bisexuality as a genuine label. Questioning your sexuality is normal and there is nothing wrong with changing your label, but it has to be good representation and not the opposite.
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But, even though I didn’t agree with many of the choices made by the characters, and have some objections to the representation, I still feel that this is an important book that shows how complicated it is to navigate personhood, to question your sexuality while falling in love, to be biracial and to deal with homophobia, to grieve a family member and deal with past traumas. There were certain things about the plot that I found completely unbelievable and really distracted me from the story, but I still really enjoyed the relationships and the complexities between Coop and Jupiter and Rae, and how this book can help initiate important discussions.

Rating:
3 stars

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Author info:
Nic Stone