Thank you NetGalley for giving me a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I absolutely love the cover. The colors, the lowercase letters, I love it all.

This book is so so important. I feel like books like this should be a staple in middle schools everywhere. This an important topic.

Overall, I'd definitely read more books by this author.

I pick stories about other people’s life experiences because I enjoy having a glimpse into what it’s like to be them.

Call Me Him was a real, harsh , heart breaking look into the life of a Trans boy living in the early 2000s.

The book gives you a lot of content warnings and resources for dealing with those warnings ahead of the story which is wonderful and necessary in this case.

Even with the warnings my heart wasn’t ready for what I endured. However, I have no room to
judge someone else’s life story and I am in awe that someone could share this with the world.

As someone who had been sexually assaulted, I’m not ready to tell my story to others, but this has given me hope that maybe one day I can tell my story.

A very nice story about friendship and trust with a transgender boy as main character and the friends who helped him get to be seen, come to himself, heal, find love and become the man he is.
I liked very much how each character's POV protrayed their insecurities and confusions, their rage and angst and their feelings and personalities.
I appreciate so much that the author had displayed some content/trigger warnings at the begining of this book, such as, drug abuse, physical and emotional abuse, self harm, dysphoria and misgendering, so more sensitive readers could be displeased.
Still this is a very nice story and many, maybe all, transgender people dealing with family issues and low self steem can identify.

Edited review:
The first time I read this book, I DNF at about 5% and I wrote the review you find below. When I finished another book today, this one took my attention on my ereader again and I decided to give it another try. I shouldn’t have done this. Because now I DNF at 15% after reading the same things twice from Wylie’s and Alex’s POV. This time I rate it after all because I think the writing is not that well. I won’t put this edited review on Goodreads though because I didn’t finish reading it.

First review:
I wanted to like this book. A lot. Because the premise is good, a fourteen-year-old trans guy who is searching for his identity and wants to be a boy badly. But his mom still sees him as a girl. And the trigger warnings at the beginning were phenomenal, so few books do it like this. Huge compliment! So I was ready to give a wonderful review! But I can’t give a high rating because of the premise and early trigger warnings.

The story took me by surprise, in this case not a positive one. Wylie is fourteen and one of the first words on the first page was peripheral. Huh, I thought? This is a fourteen-year-old talking. And he talks about peripheral vision? It made me cringe and immediately doubt the story. And it didn’t make it better for me when Wylie lit up a joint going to school, twice (!), even after an encounter with the police (who were homophobic and cruel by the way). And then he shared a joint with his friends, still the same one he lit up twice? Or another one? Huh? I thought again. It’s still early morning! And then when the first bell rang Wylie gave his friend Cam an oblong, white pill ... Huh????. And we’re not done because then Wylie considered for a moment sneaking away to smoke another joint. Yes, another one, at what? 8.30 A.M.? It’s not that I don’t want to read about fourteen-year-olds smoking pot and using pills (although it feels really uncomfortable). It’s just that I didn’t feel the context and all those huh’s made me drop out of the story again and again. And I only read a few pages until then.

I almost never DNF a story but I decided to quit this one. I don’t think this story and I will be friends ever. So I won’t rate Call me him and I hope other readers will like this more than I did.

I received an ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

After this bumpy start I fought myself to read the whole story. I don’t like not finishing books, especially not when a writer or a publisher trusts me with an ARC. So I finally read it, luckily it’s a fast read but I have to admit I skimmed pages. And I never connected to Wylie, the way I wanted too. In the end, unfortunately I only can rate it two stars and that’s mostly because of the premise and the trigger warnings.

I received an ARC from the author and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Thank you, NetGalley and Indipendently Published, for the chance to read and review this book.

TW: transphobia, misgendering, drug use and abuse, sexual assault, body dysphoria, bullying, self-harm, anxiety and depression

"Call me him" is an intense story about a transgender male, struggling with authority, puberty and family. I really appreciated the fact that the author put the trigger warnings right away. So few books do that, so that'a a plus. The story is interesting and intense, told by two POVs, the main character Wylie and his friend Alex. But even though this is an important story, a strong one, I couldn't get involved, because I couldn't like the writing style and the characters.

Interesting story about a trans boy. This takes place in the early 2000s so it's even more scary for Wylie to live and be who he wants.

Notice - DNF at 20%

***I received a free copy from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review***

I tried to give this book a fair shot. I picked it back up a few times and just couldn't get into it. The way the book is formatted makes the dialogue hard to read. It's not spaced correctly so it reads like a run on sentence.

The book is written in two alternating POV. A few times the POV basically goes over the exact same scenario that just happened word for word.

I think the idea for the book is well intentioned but poorly executed.

2/5🌟: i thought i would love this one, like please give me all the trans main characters, but - not like this. the postive things: trigger warnings on the first page, various trans characters including a non-binary love interest. the writing was very simple, which i guess is okay for a younger audience. unfortunately, there were two perspectives (wiley and his friend alex) but there was no point to alex's perspective, everything evolved around wiley anyways and nothing else happened to alex. side characters kept changing which was annoying to keep up with and at last, wiley gets involved with a 18-year-old and i'm not comfortable with these power dynamics.

Call me him by River Braun.
Wylie was born a girl but she feels like a boy and wants to be a boy? Can he?
This was an emotional read. I did find it hard to read at times so I put it down when I felt like that. I didn't have any favourite characters. The story was ok. I loved the end part with Wylie's graduation and his speech. You will need tissues when reading this book. 4*.

An engrossing novel that tackles some really tough topics such as transphobia, body dysphoria, misgendering, sexual assault, and substance abuse. Braun did a great job of writing an entertaining, emotionally raw story that is also educational and informative. Many trans teens will be able to relate to Wiley, feel seen in their experience, and potentially learn something. I really did love this book, I didn’t rate it five stars for a few minor plot-related reasons but as a YA novel about trans representation, experience, and visibility I’d rate it among the best.

Thank you, Netgalley, for the ARC approval of this book!

I adored CALL ME HIM, I really did. I was only prevented from giving it a full 5-star rating due to the icky normalised sexual relationship between an almost-15 y/o and an 18 y/o. I kept expecting someone to raise it as a red flag, to find out, and it become the issue it is. Wylie, the MC, his friend only noticed more when the person Wylie dated carved his name into their wrist to keep him with them forever. Weird. Kind of gross and super icky.

Despite that, and it's an effort to try to ignore that so I can focus on the positives of the book, CALL ME HIM was a book I read in almost a single sitting. It's emotional, compelling, strong, unforgettable, and what every trans kid at that age needs to read--big minus the god-awful relationship thrown in at the very end. Wylie was a strong MC, who faced more than his fair share of hardships. All he wants to do is forget about everything the world wants to remind him of: as a trans boy, he's not good enough--not for himself, his friends, his family. He's already into fairly regular drug use when the story starts, but spins into a more dangerous use of it as the story progresses.

When he meets Alex, Wylie is welcomed into a world of acceptance, hope, love, and the promise of exploring future transitioning. Alex's mum is a therapist, who supports him, rather than puts him down. She helps him--the family welcome Wylie like their own. Maybe it's just my gay trans brain but I thought the author would roll with a bisexual awakening through Alex and Wylie--that's where I thought the romance subplot would lie, which, in my opinion, would have read stronger. However, that's not the path the author took. Of course, there is betrayal, which adds to the final battles of the story--and they were executed perfectly.

This is the book I needed to read when I was 14 and being trans wasn't a thing I knew properly, and told my friends for the first time, too young to think it was a thing to walk away from me over, and I wasn't yet old enough to know being trans was okay and it wasn't going to change and that was okay too. That being trans would change my life--sometimes for the better or the worse. Either way, it was being truer to myself.

CALL ME HIM was beautiful, emotionally-wrecking, hard to read at times, and a big sign for other trans kids that says, "Hey!!! I know things are garbage right now but just hold on, okay? There are good people to help you and want to see you thrive!!!" I'm very happy to have read this book.

This was very emotionally raw and immediately drew me in to the story and troubles of the main character, who was very well written. However u felt that the pacing was a bit too slow which meant I didn't feel as engaged with this as I really wanted to be.

Maybe this story just wasn't for me, but I barely finished this one. It was tiring to read it, with the protagonist being very "woe is me" about life. I couldn't really relate to much of anything these kids did -- is this what high school is like now? I didn't think I was that far removed from life as a teenager, but now I'm starting to wonder. I feel like this was written by someone who played a Tony Hawk video game at one point, and then declared themselves an expert on what skaters like to do with their time. My one praise for the book is that there's a lot of queer representation, with lots of opportunities to educate readers on identities. I appreciated that at least.

DNF
The writing felt bland and simplistic. And this book was very unrealistic to me, so much of it didn’t make sense. And so much of the drama felt like it was just there for shock value. As a trans reader this book felt like another trans sob story about how being trans is so sad and terrible. I had to DNF because I’m tired of reading tragic trans stories and would rather read books about trans joy. Maybe there was a happy ending, but it just wasn’t worth it for me to keep reading and find out