[Content Warnings: Self harm, blood, and physical abuse.] Rosanne has haunted eyes. She stares at the mirror. The mirror stares back. When she pulls stringy, black hair away from her forehead, an old, angry scar glowers above her brow. Her hand twitches. “You’ll be late for school!” her mother yells from the hallway. Rosanne snaps her hand away from her head reflexively. She curls her fist into her crisp uniform until the wrinkles are permanent. She exhales shakily and opens the bathroom door. Another day. Another mark on the calendar. Another nothing in an endless stream of nothings. At school, Bonnie talks about books, television and other pastimes of girls their age. Rosanne listens with
[Content warnings for homophobia, racism, and transphobia] “Dad, do I have to take these?” I ask as I hold the bottle of pills in his face. “They always make me feel sick.” He doesn’t even look up from his phone to answer. Instead, he grabs at one of the newspapers sitting on the coffee table. It is a few weeks old, but it’s a prop that would do the trick. “I can’t believe that they let them get married,” he spits. “Now that they can marry who’s to stop more radical groups from manipulating the government and pushing their own agenda?” He must have heard me. It’s been months since same gender marriage was legalised and the newspapers have moved on. But my father hasn’t. “What’s next, huh? Mu
One day, Arthur was discovered dead. Arthur, the child who everybody despised. He had drowned in the little pond near the back of his house. He had somehow gotten out the window of his bedroom, gone down beyond the garden, and slipped past the screen of trees to the edge of the water. His father had happened to be in the area at the time, taking a walk. He had tried to revive the boy, but it was too late. A few minutes earlier, perhaps … but no. In sad resignation, he brought his son’s tiny, bloated body back up to the house. It seemed Arthur had swum out to the deep water and hadn’t been strong enough to come in again. An accident, they said. The parents grieved, naturally. He had been a cu
Simon vs. The Homo Sapiens Agenda follows Simon Spier as he struggles with keeping his sexuality a secret while the one other person who knows, Martin Addison, is blackmailing him. In addition, he chats via email with another gay boy, who uses the pen-name ‘Blue’, with chapters being dedicated to these exchanges. This element brings a refreshing perspective and heavily contextualises the setting of the story. The young adult fiction grew in popularity after the release of its movie counterpart, Love Simon, in 2018. The story begins with Martin blackmailing Simon, and potentially outing him. This starts readers off in the thick of the crisis, but it does mean that readers know straight from t