may
Show Girl is a book with a lot of potential. I'm a huge fan of Alyson Greaves' later works, and much of what I love about them is present here. Greaves does a wonderful job fully realizing classic trans stories, accented with some of the best character writing I've ever seen. But where Alyson's other books transcend the stories that inspired them, Show Girl merely succeeds. Much of this is due to the constrained time frame: Alex has to go from a sad boy to a happy woman over the course of just one weekend, and this results in fairly jarring pacing as she speedruns through things that would normally span days if not weeks in just a few hours. Despite this awkwardness—there are a few contrived scenes in which way-too-knowledgable cis people handhold Alex through her transition—she's a perfectly fun lead for a story like this. But without any room to breathe, she and the other characters don't feel fully realized.
I don't want to sound too negative because what's here is still incredibly fun. The core premise is incredibly solid, Ben and Emily steal every single scene they're in, and Alex and James' relationship is engaging. But the pacing really drags this one down for me, from something that could have been truly special to a fun, but ultimately unremarkable story.
Show Girl is a book with a lot of potential. I'm a huge fan of Alyson Greaves' later works, and much of what I love about them is present here. Greaves does a wonderful job fully realizing classic trans stories, accented with some of the best character writing I've ever seen. But where Alyson's other books transcend the stories that inspired them, Show Girl merely succeeds. Much of this is due to the constrained time frame: Alex has to go from a sad boy to a happy woman over the course of just one weekend, and this results in fairly jarring pacing as she speedruns through things that would normally span days if not weeks in just a few hours. Despite this awkwardness—there are a few contrived scenes in which way-too-knowledgable cis people handhold Alex through her transition—she's a perfectly fun lead for a story like this. But without any room to breathe, she and the other characters don't feel fully realized.
I don't want to sound too negative because what's here is still incredibly fun. The core premise is incredibly solid, Ben and Emily steal every single scene they're in, and Alex and James' relationship is engaging. But the pacing really drags this one down for me, from something that could have been truly special to a fun, but ultimately unremarkable story.