Time Out

Time Out is a queer contemporary YA novel that explores coming out and standing up for yourself.

Thank you to Turn the Page Tours and the publisher for providing me with an ARC copy for my honest review. From the beginning of the novel, we find out that Barclay, the MC is ready to be open about his sexuality with his family and his small town. He is met with bullying and homophobia, and he has to figure out how to address the intolerant nature of his small town. There is a small romantic subplot, but this is truly a story about never letting others take away what defines you. There were a lot of themes tackled in the book, which I think could have been either fully fleshed out by making the book a bit longer or cut out completely. This book addressed grief, homophobia, voting rights, and financial corruption.

The book was okay. I understand why the MC acted the way he did but he was still kind of annoying. I was hoping he wouldn't be paired off with the only other gay character in the book too but unfortunately, we don't always get what we want. There's also A LOT of homophobia in this book which again, I understand why and it's important for stories to have that but I wasn't prepared for the sheer amount of it. Not my favorite book by far but it had some cute moments and I teared up a bit.