Book Review: Loving Lakyn by Charlotte Reagan

Loving Lakyn 
by Charlotte Reagan
Publication Date: November 20, 2017
Format: ARC E-Book
Genres: Young Adult - LGBTQIA
Find it On: Amazon
My Rating: ★★★★★

Synopsis:

Lakyn James is sixteen years old and hating every second of it. He was supposed to be done, he'd tapped out. End of story, unsubscribe here. Suicide "attempt", they said. His intentions had no "attempt" in them. 

Re-entering normal life after ‘trying’ to take his own is weird. Especially when the world keeps going like it never happened. He still has to eat breakfast, go to school, and somehow convince a cute boy that he’s too damaged to date.

Scott White comes with his own problems, namely a habit of drinking too much and being indecisive about rather he wants in the closet, or out of it. Lakyn can’t stand him; he also can’t help smiling when Scott’s around.

Unfortunately - or fortunately - for Lakyn, life has decided to give him a second chance. He's not happy about it, but maybe, with a lot of hard work and a good therapist, he can learn to be. And maybe he can hold Scott’s hand at the same time.

No promises though.

About the Author:

Hey guys I'm Charlotte Reagan!

I'm 23 years old; born, raised, and currently residing in a small town in Texas with my cat. I've been writing pretty much all my life, even when I was too young to know how to put my stories down on paper. Once I started I couldn't seem to stop! I still have boxes of old notebooks filled with ideas and plots that I never finished. I write young adult romances focusing primarily on the LGBT+ community. I hope to have lighthearted stories that bring about hope, laughter, and maybe even a few tears. I can usually be found with my laptop or off traveling somewhere!

The LGBT+ Community and LGBT books have always been a source of great support for me and I hope that my books can maybe be there for someone else.

Goodreads / Twitter / Website

My Review:

If you follow my reviews or blog, you’ve probably picked up on how much I utterly adored Just Juliet. Not only was the book amazing, but working with Charlotte for the launch was incredible as she is such a well spoken and lovely person. When I was approached about reading Loving Lakyn, I knew I wanted to be a part of the launch again, but here’s the thing: I don’t review books that include self-harm because it’s a hard subject for me. I’m in a better place than I was when I originally made a hard and fast rule for myself about that, and after sitting down and discussing it with my therapist, I sat down and binged this book in a day.

Here’s the thing I knew as soon as I picked up the book: it is a damn good book.

The title serves as a pretty good summary to the book: it’s about learning to love Lakyn. Lakyn is a high school boy with a hard life. He is gay in an unwelcoming family and an unwelcoming world. He suffers from mental illness and for many years, has no real support network for dealing with it. He handles it with self-harm and self-destruction. There are few people he cares about and the few he does have he pushes away.

Here’s the thing: Lakyn is not a pleasant character. He is throughly miserable and does miserable things, and while this book is about his happiness improving, there isn’t a magic fix-all that makes him as “happy” as he seems in Just Juliet. So that means that this book really is his inner dialogue, and this is about how far he gets in his recovery. That’s just so spot on to how it is, how different a person’s head is from the perception of those around them, and that was subtly and beautifully written.

The new perspective on Juliet was also fascinating. Aside from loving another glimpse into her character, she held an important place in this book in recognizing that you can’t save everyone. As a person who has been fighting depression for years, I can tell you, depression glasses make it a lot easier to see other depressed people. Lakyn spends so much time helping himself and helping Scott that, at a point, he realizes he has not been helping Juliet. It opens an interesting debate on whether he had a responsibility to help her just because he noticed her spiraling. Should he have said something? Should he have sat his uncle down and demanded help for Juliet? How could he have done that when he wasn’t even over the hurdle of asking for help himself? Without giving a direct answer or glorifying one way or the other, I think this painted a realistic relationship of one struggling person relating to another.

The love story itself is what really got me, though. Again, it’s spiraling person meets spiraling person. But Scott is a unique character in how deeply hidden his pain is. He’s a jock, he has friends, he has a stable life. But these things don’t protect your from prejudice, internal or external, and it really takes the whole book for Scott to unravel his struggles let alone overcome them. It’s also an exploration into the difference between being closeted or out, and the expectations of what acceptance will look like versus the reality of when it doesn’t. Without giving away the story, the romance plot is beautiful, and most importantly to me, it is not about them fixing each other. There is a point that Lakyn realizes how easy it is to fall down the rabbit hole of saying “Scott makes me happy and therefore Scott is the source of my happiness,” but there is a major hurdle he overcomes in recognizing that relationships cannot work with that kind of expectation. Not only does he not drag Scott down with that, but he also recovers with Scott’s *help* but not by pawning off his problems.

I’m ranting, I know I am, but this book is beautiful and deserves every star I can give it. I’m sorry this review is more of a discussion of the topics than the book itself, but I don’t think something this heavy deserves being reduced to a discussion of syntax and plot structure. It was a trip for me to read more so than a book usually is and I’m just so glad I had the emotional energy to tackle it.

Diversity Score: Own Voices (+5), Gay MC (+2), MC with mental illness (+2), Supporting gay and bi characters (+1), Supporting character with mental illness (+1) = 11

Book Review: Just Juliet by Charlotte Reagan

Just Juliet by Charlotte Reagan 

Publication Date: September 21, 2016

Genres: Young Adult - Romance - LGBTQ+

Find it On: Goodreads

Synopsis:

Lena Newman is 17 years old and pretty satisfied with her life. Until her world is turned upside down. Juliet James is the new girl at school and very quickly manages to send Lena’s heart wild. Juliet introduced Lena to a part of herself she didn’t know was there, taking her on an emotional journey where loyalty, friendships and family relationships are tested. Juliet represents the road less traveled. Will Lena take it?

About the Author:

Lena Newman is 17 years old and pretty satisfied with her life. Until her world is turned upside down. Juliet James is the new girl at school and very quickly manages to send Lena’s heart wild. Juliet introduced Lena to a part of herself she didn’t know was there, taking her on an emotional journey where loyalty, friendships and family relationships are tested. Juliet represents the road less traveled. Will Lena take it?

My Review:

I received a free ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Wowza, this book was awesome!

Lena is a high school senior who has sort of drifted through life so far, unsure of what she wants to study, unsure of why she doesn't love her boyfriend, and unsure what her future looks like. But all of that is before she meets the new girl, Juliet, who makes her realize the one major way her life isn't what it seems: that she's bisexual.

What I loved about this book is that it was so real. Often, LGBT romances are either very dark or very warm and fuzzy. While those both have their places, it's something like this book that I found most important growing up because I can actually relate to the characters.

Lena was an awesome MC. Getting to explore her development of her sexuality was the main plotline of the book, but everyone around her was just as fascinating to read. Her best friend was a lovable jerk, Juliet's live-in-cousin was sassy but not a stereotype, and Juliet, oh Juliet! What a perfect romantic lead! She was an edgy, artsy, Jack-Skellington-wearing manic pixie dream girl, but isn't that exactly what we all would have fallen for back in high schoool?

Not to say that there wasn't seriousness to the story or that Lena's journey was a cake walk, but it was a refreshing change to see an LGBT book that had engaging characters and not just a political agenda. I look forward to seeing more from this author!

Guest Post With Charlotte Reagan, Author of Just Juliet, an LGBTQ+ Romance Releasing TOMORROW!

I am so excited for Looseleaf Reviews to host a review and release announcement for Just Juliet by Charlotte Reagan! I ate this book up in one night, and I guarantee you'll fall in love with Reagan's MC's Lena, Juliet, and all their family and friends.

Before my review goes up tomorrow, I let's welcome Charlotte Reagan, who is a lovely and insanely talented writer who has been kind enough to do a guest post for my blog. Without any further ado, here is the author herself!

--

 So Nina said that she’d like to hear about what being an Indie LGBT+ author is like, and I thought about that for a long time but the only answer I could come up with seemed to be: I don’t know.

Because sometimes I still feel like none of this is real.

When I was young, I had a one girl mission to Hate Reading and everything about it until the day the first Harry Potter book landed in my lap and I caved. After that, it was book after book; I couldn’t get enough. Then when I was in fifth grade my teacher opened the year with the fact that writing was going to be a part of our everyday curriculum.

I took to it like a fish to water. Suddenly, writing was everything. But the older I got the more important other things became. School, college, a career for the rest of my life. As much as I loved writing, I brushed it off, let it become nothing but a hobby and something to do in my free time.

When I started posting Just Juliet online, people seemed to really like it, and I honestly considered self publishing for awhile. But the deeper I got, the more overwhelmed I became, and once again it got sat aside.

Then I stumbled across Inkitt’s Swoon contest. It definitely wasn’t something I expected to win, but I decided it might be cool so I entered anyway. I knew that I was doing well, but I never imagined nearly well enough to place, so when I got the email requesting a phone call, I thought, “They probably want to tell me that my story was interesting.”

Turns out I was wrong.

I’d won.

I spent the next week expecting to wake up. There was no way this was real. There was no way this was actually happening. Not to me. Not my book. Even as the months passed, and contracts were signed, and edits were made...there was still just no way!

One thing is for sure though...if I am dreaming, I never want to wake up.

But besides just being an author...what is it like to be an LGBT+ author specifically? Again, I don’t really know, because at this point I still feel like someone threw me up into the air and the ground isn’t a place that exists yet...but here’s what I can say.

As someone who identifies as LGBT+ myself (and has been a part of the community for even longer than I’ve had a label), there aren’t enough books out there for us. We’re thirsty, thirsty little things, reaching out for whatever, whenever. Waiting for someone to feature us, talk about us. Where are the stories about lesbian princesses? Gay band members? Bisexual thieves? Transgender wizards? Queer questioning college nerds? Intersex dragon trainers? Asexual mermaids?

They’re out there, of course, but there aren’t enough. So, when I sat down to write, I asked myself specifically what do I want to write...and I knew the answer. I wanted to write about what I’d always wanted to read.

So I started with romance. The typical Boy-Meets-Girl in high school storyline but with one very important twist. And then I did my best to make it my own. To make it authentic, relatable, and yet still enjoyable enough to escape the real world and dive into. I wanted the kind of LGBT novel that isn’t just about the hardships and drama of being something different than the social norm, but about being true to yourself and finding your version of happy.

Hopefully I managed to do that.

Nina also asked if I have any Indie LGBT+ book recommendations, so before I leave I’m going to sign off with that~

Her Name in the Sky by Kelly Quindlen is about a teenage girl who finds herself in love with her best friend. But the pressures of a conservative town and her desire to just be normal might keep her from getting what she really wants.  

Pretty much any book by A.M. Snead I recommend for all your adult M/M needs. Lost in Love happens to be my favorite, but she has tons of books to pick from. Expect a real emotional journey from anything she writes.

E.M. Holloway has my favorite werewolf series of all time that includes characters of different sexualities, but the real selling point for me is that the main character is involved in a m/m relationship where his partner is asexual and it’s handled beautifully. It’s called The Sum of it’s Parts and is up to book three, which you can find on Lulu.

Nora Sakavic has a series called All for the Game which is about college sports but is a fantastic read and includes a few gay characters as well as one who is (inferred) demisexual - which is a lesser known label on the asexual spectrum. I’m currently suffering from a major book hangover with this one.

Anyway, that’s all folks! Thanks for your time, and I hope you’re having a great day!

-Charlotte Reagan