The State of Us by Shaun David Hutchinson

"When Dean Arnault’s mother decided to run for president, it wasn’t a surprise to anyone, least of all her son. But still that doesn’t mean Dean wants to be part of the public spectacle that is the race for the White House—at least not until he meets Dre.

The only problem is that Dre Rosario's on the opposition; he’s the son of the Democratic nominee. But as Dean and Dre’s meet-ups on the campaign trail become less left to chance, their friendship quickly becomes a romantic connection unlike any either of the boys have ever known.

If it wasn’t hard enough falling in love across the aisle, the political scheming of a shady third-party candidate could cause Dean and Dre’s world to explode around them."

I went round and round trying to decide what to say about this book. I didn’t hate it when I finished it, but I wasn’t really happy with it. I feel like the characters had zero depth. I wasn’t entirely sure why they wanted to be together because I just didn’t see a spark between them other than them telling me there was one. I don’t think the rep in this book was all that great. The ace character came across like a bad stereotype, which was sad because I was excited to see more ace/demi rep in books. The entire time I was wondering how this could end well, and then ending felt like such a letdown. And honestly, without the name Andre Rosario and being told that he is Latinx, I never would have guessed that. The real issues facing BIPOC were not addressed at all in this book, which seemed odd considering there was a Latinx Man running for President. You’re really telling me that immigration policy, discrimination, or anything else on the long list of issues Latinx people face wouldn't come up in a Presidential campaign? I doubt it. But to be clear, I am a white queer woman, so there is probably more that I missed.

I think I could see what this book was trying to do. We’re not going to get anywhere if Republicans and Democrats just keep screaming at each other without hearing each other. That said, I don’t feel like this book did any of the hard work it needed to. It kind of just comes to a middle ground of “Agree to disagree,” and “As long as you have love, the rest doesn’t matter.” The problem is that the Republican nominee here supports some pretty harmful things and there’s no indication that she’s changed her mind on any of them by the end. And I don’t think it’s fair to tell teens that you HAVE to get along with people who don’t acknowledge your full humanity. If you have the capacity to do that, great, but no one should be expected to do that work. The onus shouldn’t be on ANY marginalized person to educate their oppressors about why they deserve to be treated with full humanity.

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Genre: ya, contemporary, lgbtqia+

Representation: ace/demi, mlm, wlw side character, latinx mc

Content Warnings: outing, discussions of school shootings, transphobic characters, homophobia