When Love Comes to Town by Tom Lennon

When Love Comes to Town by Tom Lennon
"The year is 1990, and in his hometown of Dublin, Ireland, Neil Byrne plays rugby, keeps up with the in-crowd at his school, and is just a regular guy. A guy who's gay. It's a secret he keeps from the wider world as he explores the city at night and struggles to figure out how to reveal his real self--and to whom."- summary from Goodreads

I absolutely love that early LGBT books like this are being re-printed for today. While there have been many strides since the early 90s (when this book was originally published) for the GLBT community, there are still many places this story will find some wonderful footing for those teens reading it. It's a bit of a quaint story being that it is set in Dublin in 1990 and there's a lot of focus on coming to terms with one's self and with navigating the murky waters of coming out and finding out who strikes your fancy (and who doesn't).

I really enjoyed Neil's voice- it's introspective, feels mature at times mainly when he's dealing with anything aside from his homosexuality, and with his homosexuality comes the innocence and wide-eyed wonder of a young boy. It was interesting to read his story and follow the emotional arc through it; all readers will find something of themselves in Neil, no matter what your orientation is. When it comes to love, it's universal and the same feelings, nervousness, excitement, etc. still exist.

Overall, please do give this book a try. It's a wonderfully realistic coming-of-age and coming-out novel, and has a wonderful foreword from James Klise, who wrote Love Drugged (which was also fantastic) that provides a great context for this story.

FTC: Received e-galley from Netgalley. Link above is an Amazon Associate link; any profit goes toward funding contests.