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Review

Kid comes out: it's a common queer trope, the sort of story told hundreds of times by hundreds of writers. This one, a print-on-demand title, might have found a "real" publisher a few years ago: it's sweet and imaginative, laced with enough originality of character and setting, and – though like many PoD titles could have used one good pass of an editor's pencil – pretty well-written. The kid is teenager Mason, raised in rural Mississippi, with an apparently unrequited crush on his charismatic buddy Billy, knowing he's queer but not sure what to do about it until a) a new young man in town flirts with him at the ice cream shop where he's working, and b) his black sheep aunt Savannah invites him to live with her in New Orleans, where it happens she runs the most popular drag show in town, where it also happens that sweet 19-year-old Joey works. A blessing of the book is that, unlike many coming-out teen tales, it doesn't end with a neat happy-ever-after love; young Mason makes mistakes, like most people, and learns that taking chances is part of growing up. Perhaps you're bored by coming-out novels; consider that A Time Before Me laces its sentimentality with enough jagged reality to give it an interesting edge.

 -- Richard Labonte, Books to Watch Out For