TRIGGER WARNING for extreme lesbophobia, mentions of coercion & r*pe, mentions of pedophilia, mentions of (psychological) self harm, mentions of sex, mentions of biphobia
If you can’t read through any of those: PLEASE DO NOT READ OR SUPPORT THE BOOK ODD ONE OUT BY NIC STONE
note: i haven’t read this book and i’m making no claims that i have. my very dear friend did, and they have asked me to repost the below here to spread the word abt this shitty ass book
“I’m posting this as a warning to other lesbians so none of you have to go through what I did read this book, & to allies to lesbians to not support such a lesbophobic book, as well as to anyone who would be negatively affected by any of the content I warned about.
Spoiler warning.. But I VERY highly recommend STAYING AWAY from this book, and recommend you take my word for it if you don’t want to/can’t read about any of the things I listed.
This book was a train wreck. I wanted to like it; a love story between three teens of color, including two LGBT+ characters, a lesbian and a bi girl sounded like great representation. I was wrong.
I’d like to note that obviously it is not my place as a white person to comment on how the representation of poc in the book was handled, and that I can’t understand the experiences of LGBT poc. However these elements are harmful outside of that & I can speak as a lesbian to that portion of the book, and all lesbians, including lesbians of color, deserve much better representation than this incredibly harmful book provided.
The whole storyline about the lesbian character is that she likes girls and that the straight guy who is in love with her has to accept that she’ll never be with him. The book starts out from the straight guy’s pov and there is an uncomfortable amount of him thinking about the lesbian character’s body and how sexy she is. I hoped, and it seemed like, the book was heading in the direction of the straight guy accepting that she wouldn’t be with him and that her love for girls was valid. However, towards the end of the book, the bi girl (who the lesbian is in love with) tells the lesbian that she is in love with their straight guy friend. Which would be fine individually except for the fact that the lesbian responds by, for whatever horrible reason, asking the straight guy to have sex with her—which she enjoys and says she was more turned on by than girls had ever made her feel, and I guess is “converted” into not being a lesbian anymore. I had to stop reading after that because I couldn’t stomach any more of that. Obviously in real life some bi women start off thinking they’re lesbians and then realize they’re bi, and that is of course valid. But writing a book where one character’s storyline centers around her being a lesbian and then making her “converted” by having sex with a guy is inexcusably lesbophobic. As I didn’t read any more it’s possible that the character afterwards realizes that she actually is a lesbian like she thought, but that would mean that she engaged in what was essentially glamorized, romanticized psychological self-harm.
There are real lesbians who self harm by forcing themselves to have sex with men and it is not the place of an author who is not a lesbian to tell that story (the author has a husband). Having this in a storyline is going to make lesbians feel ashamed of themselves and upset (it already made me incredibly upset) and has a very strong potential to make straight boys/men think that pursuing lesbians is fine because this book implies lesbians will probably eventually “cave in” and not be lesbian anymore.
The extreme lesbophobia also was only one highly immoral and concerning part to the book—there are also biphobic comments from characters that go unchecked, there are age gaps between TWO sets of adult/minor characters who are attracted to & physical with one another, and I haven’t read this far but I know from reading other reviews that there is a scene involving coercion & r*pe that I believe is not handled well. LGBT teens, teens of color, and especially teens who are both deserve MUCH better & I was incredibly hurt and disappointed while reading this book.
On a much more positive note, here are some books featuring lesbian characters, including lesbian characters of color, that I felt were well done & did not contain the incredibly harmful rhetoric Odd One Out did:
Tell Me Again How A Crush Should Feel by Sara Farizan (trigger warning for lesbophobia from characters in the book, which is condemned)
it tells us that prosecutors love charging people with "racketeering" because it's incredibly vaguely defined and enables them to charge and convict large numbers of people (most of whom ABSOLUTELY do not deserve it) off of incredibly flimsy evidence. also that thugger and trump have the same prosecutor in georgia. fani t willis look her up
thats now both green party co-leaders who've been injured by anti-abortion chuds. james shaw back in 2019 when that moron came across him out on the street and decked him, fracturing the bone around his eye. now, marama davidson being sideswiped while protesting for trans rights and bodily autonomy by a destiny church members' motorbike. destinys church being there to support the rally of a woman just as anti-trans, anti-abortion and anti-general human rights as they are.
