Two best friends. A shared birthday. Six years…
ERIC: There was the day we were born. There was the minute Morgan and I decided we were best friends for life. The years where we stuck by each other’s side—as Morgan’s mom died, as he moved across town, as I joined the football team, as my parents started fighting. But sometimes I worry that Morgan and I won’t be best friends forever. That there’ll be a day, a minute, a second, where it all falls apart and there’s no turning back the clock.
MORGAN: I know that every birthday should feel like a new beginning, but I’m trapped in this mixed-up body, in this wrong life, in Nowheresville, Tennessee, on repeat. With a dad who cares about his football team more than me, a mom I miss more than anything, and a best friend who can never know my biggest secret. Maybe one day I’ll be ready to become the person I am inside. To become her. To tell the world. To tell Eric. But when?
Six years of birthdays reveal Eric and Morgan’s destiny as they come together, drift apart, fall in love, and discover who they’re meant to be—and if they’re meant to be together. From the award-winning author of If I Was Your Girl, Meredith Russo, comes a heart-wrenching and universal story of identity, first love, and fate.
Title : Birthday
Author : Meredith Russo
Format : ARC
Page Count : 275
Genre : YA contemporary, LGBTQIA+
Publisher : Flatiron Books
Release Date : May 21, 2019
Reviewer : Hollis / Micky
Rating : ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ / ★ ★ ★ ★
Hollis’ 5 star review
BIRTHDAY blew me away.
“I don’t think we have much choice in who we turn out to be, as much as we might want to.”
I honestly don’t even know what to say. But my god. I was choking back the sobs by page thirty and that more or less was what I did throughout the rest of the book, too. And just thinking about the journey makes me want to cry.
What do you do when you can’t swim up, you can’t swim down, and staying put will suffocate you?
As always I went in with only a very very vague idea as to what to expect and as a result I was totally unprepared for.. everything. I loved the subject matter, I hurt from the agony of some of Morgan and Eric’s experiences, their struggles, but their enduring connection, the evolution of it, was just so heartbreakingly beautiful. Equally lovely was the way in which the story was told. I’ve read a book or two like this before but never has it suited the story as well as it did for this one.
I don’t know if anyone will love me the way that I really am.
I should have so much to say about this because I loved it so much but I’m honestly just at a loss and a puddle of feelings, so. Here’s a great book with a terrible review to recommend it. And know that I will absolutely be picking up Russo’s debut (IF I WAS YOUR GIRL) and anything and everything else she releases.
** I received an ARC from the publisher (thank you!) in exchange for an honest review. **
Micky’s 4.5 star review
I’m not going to cover old ground here having come to this a few months after Hollis but oh my, this book took me on a journey, a very emotional one.
Birthday is laid out as Eric and Morgan’s stories on each birthday from about 12 to 18, there is no narrative in between but there is definitely a catch up on what’s gone on during the gap. Eric and Morgan are an example of an unconditional friendship in their younger years, not an easy one but a giving one. I loved both these characters individually but also in their ‘ship’ journey. (Hollis look away from the use of that word – one off).
As the story evolved there was a bully-Dad who I hated with a passion, some arse-hole family and friends and some decent people on the periphery. My heart was in my mouth, then it was breaking, then it was hopeful, then it was angry…are you feeling my experience, it was pretty emotional. I messaged Hollis at one point to threaten her if this didn’t end well, as she rec’d it to me. Bad friend that I am.
I do think there is a mild case of utopia in this story in that I am not sure an Eric exists for trans teens at that age but I do hope and believe that an Eric can come into their life at a later date. That said, I loved how the story developed and I wouldn’t change a thing.
This is the kind of book that I want everyone to read, to open their mind to feel the personal journey of individuals. This is the kind of book that helps me as an educator working with young people who sometimes knock on my office door and break their hearts over major things like this. Go read it.
A Take from Two Cities 