I appreciated a lot about this story: the narrator's voice, quasi stream of consciousness and subtly Southern; and how the seemingly ambling pace revealed character development and plot in a very nonchalant, everyday-working-class way. I also really liked having a fully dimensional gender variant (and possibly queer) character front and center in a YA novel. (That's Kenny, y'all.) My complaints are that it felt like the author lost control of the story's unfolding at the three-quarters mark, and ended it by awkwardly wrapping up plot lines and putting a bow on Kenny's head. Worse, though, is that she threw in an explanatory sexual abuse backstory in a paragraph or two, and in doing this implied that this was the character's root--or reason--for being transgender*/gender variant. Which I am wholly dissatisfied (and kind of upset about) for two reasons: she does not at all address the impact this sexual abuse would have had on Kenny (relationship with foster brother, complications with coming of age and burgeoning sexuality). And second, "explaining" Kenny's otherwise ambiguous and natural gender variance this way is utterly unnecessary, and undermines the otherwise solid job she does of creating a whole, complicated and likeable main character who is also trans*. She spends a lot of time showing us Kenny's struggles with the very real friction between internally felt/known gender, gender expression, and the expectations their family and community places on them based on their birth sex. We don't need this two-second backstory in the first place, and she doesn't adequately address it in the second. So, read it if you like YA lit, Southern settings, genderqueer and trans* representations in media, good depictions of white working class Southern life, slightly dark narrators with unique voice. Just... bear in mind what I said about that root bullshit. I'd love to know what you think. I picked up "The Sweet In-Between" on a whim, in the library, after reading the first page and finding myself caught up in the pithy, vulnerable voice of Kendra. Abandoned by her imprisoned father, confused by her sexual identity, and living with a woman she calls "Aunt Glo" but who isn't her blood relative, Kendra had me from the get-go. However, as the novel progresses, the story (which had such promise) begins to fall apart. Part of this has to do with a distracting and irrelevant subplot about a manslaughter that occurs in her neighbor's apartment, and part of this has to do with the novel not tying up the central issues of identity that it set out to explore. As a reader, I had wanted Kendra to discover and embrace her sexuality; I had wanted her to find family in Aunt Glo; I had wanted her to accept herself. However, instead, the novel seems to taper off, diminishing into vignette and subtlety that is far too vaporous for this reader.Had Reynolds pursued what she set out to do in the first few pages, "The Sweet In-Between" would have been much improved. Still, I'd recommend this book to all novelists in-progress, if only to discover how unsatisfying (for a reader) it is to walk right up to the edge of something without ever taking the plunge.
What do You think about The Sweet In-Between (2009)?
A good YA book concerning gender, identity, love, and family. Would recommend to a YA.
—Paola
An interesting and disturbing tale of an outsider trying to find her place.
—marypi
It could have been a good book but just didn't capture me.
—stacia
