This Is How It Always Is

2018 Reading Challenge Prompt: A book with an LGBTQ+ protagonist: This Is How It Always Is by Laurie Frankel

In trying to find a book for this prompt, there were so many titles in this category that it was difficult to narrow it down to just one. However, this one seemed quite interesting and I’m glad now that I’ve read it.

“This is how a family keeps a secret…and how that secret ends up keeping them. This is how a family lives happily ever after…until happily ever after becomes complicated. This is how children change…and then change the world. This is Claude. He’s five years old, the youngest of five brothers, and loves peanut butter sandwiches. He also loves wearing a dress, and dreams of being a princess. When he grows up, Claude says, he wants to be a girl. Rosie and Penn want Claude to be whoever Claude wants to be. They’re just not sure they’re ready to share that with the world. Soon the entire family is keeping Claude’s secret. Until one day it explodes. This Is How It Always Is is a novel about revelations, transformations, fairy tales, and family. And it’s about the ways this is how it always is: Change is always hard and miraculous and hard again, parenting is always a leap into the unknown with crossed fingers and full hearts, children grow but not always according to plan. And families with secrets don’t get to keep them forever.” (Goodreads)

What an interesting story! Totally out of my realm of experience, but great to read a fictional story/representation of some of the issues that families and transgender people go through.

I really really enjoyed the author’s style of writing! Great use of words and images. Would consider reading more by Laurie Frankel!

Red 5 gives this book a 3/5!!