"The Lesbiana's Guide to Catholic School" just works out perfectly

    

  The Lesbiana's Guide to Catholic School, written by Sonora Reyes, is a realistic fiction book about a girl named Yamilet Flores. It's story is self-contained to Yami's perspective in a small Arizonian town with her mother and brother. The story begins at the start of Yami's junior year, where she has been transferred to a Catholic school, Slayton, along with her brother, Cesar. Her mother wants her to watch over Cesar to protect him from getting into fights, which happened often at their previous public school, Rover High. This secretly benefits Yami as well, because her previous best friend and crush, Bianca, outed her to the school before she transferred. 

    Starting with the things that the story does well, many elements of the story have a setup and payoff, including a note taped to the bathroom, a broken mirror, and phrases shared between the siblings. Small objects often come back later and pose some importance or symbolism to the characters. Yami's monologues expressing her inner feelings of constantly being embarrassed or stressed add layers of complexity to conversations that would've otherwise been boring. This also helps familiarize us with what she chooses to share with other people. She's battling internal feelings of stress from having to watch over her family, worrying about schooling, and saving up enough money to live on her own. Her mother is shown to be a strict traditional Catholic who's controlling of her children, and Yami's sure that her mom will kick both her and Cesar, who is bisexual, out of the house. This motivates her to constantly search for jobs and overwork herself managing a jewelry business with her mom. 

    Without spoiling a major part of the end of the book, her mom goes through a major personality change that doesn't make any sense for her character, especially considering her character leading up to the change. This 180° in character wasn't made to add more depth to the mother, but instead in favor of the story "just working out". This "just working out" syndrome is the biggest problem with the book, found present throughout the entire story and leaving barely any external obstacles for our main character to overcome. Yami is worried about Cesar getting into fights at school and tries to watch over him, but she doesn't have to, since he never gets into fights and gets along well with everyone. Her new crush at the school, Bo, is the only openly lesbian girl in the entire school. All the obstacles in her way of connecting with Bo are just misunderstandings that don't take any effort of the characters to overcome. The only character that Yami permanently damages her relationship with is her father, who lives in a different country for the entire story and she never has to see again. All the tensions with other characters are either a result of them being a bigoted person, or from a misunderstanding. 

    Bo is also not given any character flaws. She can speak up for herself, she's pretty, she's talented, she never messes up, she takes care of everybody around her, and she's openly gay. For the first half of the book, Bo is put on a pedestal as exactly what Yami wants to be, often gushing about how perfect she is. The only flaw in Bo's character comes from a small conflict with her parents that her parents are wrong about. This perfect image is retained throughout the story, even when the reader gets closer to her, making her feel like an ideal partner, and not a real partner. This is another problem of the story "just working out", it influences main characters as well. In the end, everything works out perfectly for Yami, no matter what conflicts she internally worries about happening. 

    As somebody who went to a conservative Catholic school for 5 years, I was excited to see this book's depiction of what Slayton is like, and the irony of being LGBTQ in a non-accepting environment. Surprisingly, despite being in the title, her going to Slayton is unimportant to the story. I was excited to read about specific parts of religious school like far-too-specific textbooks in religion class, having to go to Mass every week, and all the types of rural kids there. However, Slayton could've been swapped out for any generic school with a couple dialogue changes, and the story would remain the same. This felt very disappointing, as a rural Catholic school is a very specific setting that would've been fun to explore and create interesting character interactions.

    Overall, The Lesbiana's Guide to Catholic School is a large step forward in representation--queer people now have their predictable YA realistic fiction novels too.