Review: Love and acceptance are part of reality, too.
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 09 1, 2012
From my review in the gay-lit forum on AfterElton.comI read somewhere recently (possibly in The Advocate, to which I've subscribed for 25 years or more) that the coming-out story is over. Nonsense. No more than the straight romantic comedy is over in Hollywood. As long as there are teenagers...hell, as long as there are romantic old gay men like me...there will always be readers for YA fiction about coming out and coping with being gay. We never really stop being teenagers.After reading a couple of difficult YA books recommended by friends, I switched to R.J. Scott's far more teen-friendly and dewy-eyed YA fiction, specifically "The Decisions We Make."  The basic premise here is that a foster child, Daniel, taken in, still reeling from losing both parents at the age of nine, and grows up in the Walker family in Southern California; and in particular with his foster-brother Jamie. In some ways it's a classic nerd-and-jock story (a kind of story, BTW, of which I will never tire. Never.), but there are complexities and nuances in Scott's writing that pull you deeply into the protagonists' psyches and let you live the story through their hearts and eyes. She captures the voice of teens very well. She gives them edge and makes them frustrating without making them unlikeable.  All of us with teenage children know how difficult that is!Some would say the Walker family is impossibly good and kind. I say nonsense again, because they're not far off of what my own family was like 40 years ago when I was 17.  Every gay kid has to deal with the reality of a world that will include plenty of people who hate him; but the bedrock of family love has meant safety and survival--and will continue to be--for many. Maybe even most, now, in the 21st century.Can't wait to read more of Scott's books. Just downloaded three more, but one is clearly just a short story.