Vanilla

by Billy Merrell

Overview

A bold, groundbreaking novel about coming out, coming into your own, and coming apart.

Vanilla and Hunter have been dating since seventh grade. They came out together, navigated middle school together, and became that couple in high school that everyone always sees as a couple. There are complications and confusions, for sure. But most of all, they love each other.As high school goes, though, and as their relationship deepens, some cracks begin to show. Hunter thinks they should be having sex.Vanilla isn't so sure. Hunter doesn't mind hanging out with loud, obnoxious friends.Vanilla would rather avoid them. If they're becoming different people, can they be the same couple? Falling in love is hard.Staying in love is harder.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781338101010
Publisher:	Scholastic, Inc.
Publication date:	05/28/2019
Pages:	320
Sales rank:	828,929
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.10(h) x 0.70(d)
Age Range:	14 - 17 Years

About the Author

Billy Merrell is the author of Talking in the Dark, a poetry memoir published when he was twenty-one, and is the co-editor (with David Levithan) of The Full Spectrum: A New Generation of Writing About Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender, Questioning, and Other Identities, which received a Lambda Literary Award. Merrell is also a contributor to the New York Times-bestselling series Spirit Animals, and has published fiction, poetry, and translations in various journals and anthologies. Born in 1982, he grew up in Jacksonville, Florida, and received his MFA in Poetry from Columbia University. He now lives in Brooklyn, New York, with his husband, author Nico Medina.

Editorial Reviews

09/11/2017
Boyfriends Hunter and Vanilla have known, and loved, each other for years, but their relationship is showing stress fractures in high school: Hunter is ready (beyond ready) to have sex, and Vanilla is very much not. Writing in free verse, first-time novelist Merrell (coauthor of The Full Spectrum) alternates between the boys’ voices, painting their longings and differing views in sharp relief. “I knew this would happen/ eventually,” Vanilla acknowledges. “One of us—him specifically—/ would change/ and we’d both know why—/ specifically me.” Additional pressure comes in the form of “the Gang,” a group of out, sex-focused guys at school; Merrell incorporates poems from their ringleader, genderfluid Clown, as Vanilla and Hunter’s relationship becomes further strained. “At least Clown/ sees me as sexual,/ can imagine me/ on top of someone,” thinks Hunter. Keeping track of who’s narrating takes some work once three voices get involved (the speakers aren’t labeled, though the fonts are differentiated), but it’s well worth it as Merrell poignantly shows these queer teens reckoning with individual fears and desires, as well as powerful external pressures. Ages 14–up. Agent: Kate McKean, Howard Morhaim Literary. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly

10/01/2017
Gr 10 Up—A novel in verse depicting three gay teens as they navigate life and love. Hunter and Vanilla have dated since middle school. Hunter really wants to have sex with Vanilla, who is less-than-excited at the prospect. The couple breaks up over Vanilla's unwillingness; they then have to learn how to navigate a friendship after a relationship. Angel, aka Clown, also narrates some of the chapters in this book, but serves only as a bystander and observer of Vanilla and Hunter's relationship. Vanilla is a romantic asexual, and once he understands this, he is relieved that he is not weird or wrong for not wanting to have sex. While the diversity of characters in this book is to be celebrated, its treatment of consent and asexuality is not. Hunter frequently states things like: "I think of Vanilla and how vanilla he is,/ and I want to hold him and tell him/ it's okay if he says he isn't ready,/ even if I don't believe him—/or that if he isn't ready,/ it's for all the wrong reasons." Hunter and many of the secondary characters continually pressure Vanilla to have sex even when he clearly isn't interested, and the message that there could be "wrong reasons" not to have sex is disturbing and potentially damaging. The acephobia throughout as well as issues with consent make this a difficult purchase to recommend. VERDICT Purchase Kathryn Ormsbee's Tash Hearts Tolstoy instead for solid asexual characterization.—Jenni Frencham, Columbus Public Library, WI

School Library Journal

2017-07-15
Falling in love was the easy part for Hunter and Vanilla…staying together's the challenge."You two have been married / since the seventh grade," says their in-your-face queer classmate Clown. Hunter and Vanilla progressed slowly from being friends to being a couple, and now, at 17, everyone thinks of the two white boys as inseparable. Clown and another aggressively gay classmate regularly throw sexually charged, all-male parties for The Gang. The boys don't usually attend though Hunter seems to want to. He's ready to take their relationship beyond kissing and petting; Vanilla is not. Merrell's debut novel for young adults explores the rocky relationship of the duo in minute emotional detail from both boys' perspectives as well as from the outside through Clown's eyes—which gives readers a more nuanced view of gender-fluid Clown as well. Different typefaces indicate the point-of-view character for each free-verse poem as they remember the early days of their relationship and coming out and as they fumble through first romance and new sexual-identity issues. The verse is at times beautiful, touching, and though-provoking but at other times feels merely like prose broken into short lines. It presents a mature and frank (though not explicit) picture of a relationship struggling to survive. Tighter construction might have added more punch to the poetry, but teens will identify with the quest for identity and ground in that most groundless of times. (Verse fiction. 14-18)

Kirkus Reviews