~4 stars!~

Self-Made Boys: A Great Gatsby Remix was a joy to read! Though I haven’t read any of the other books in the Remixed Classics series, this was a great place to start. Anna-Maria McLemore delivers a fast-paced, thrilling retelling of Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby with the queer representation we knew was missing all this time (looking at you, Nick Carraway).

I am always pleasantly surprised when I manage to find a young adult book that can capture my attention thoroughly, and Self-Made Boys absolutely delivered on that front! There was something so comforting about knowing the outline of the original plot and then exploring where McLemore chose to deviate and expand. One of my favorite parts of the retelling/reimagination genre is seeing how authors extrapolate and invent in the spaces of another work. In this case, the author effortlessly included discussions about race and gender in a way that made sense in the context of young adult literature. Something in the prose was very reminiscent of Aiden Thomas’ novels Cemetery Boys and The Sunbearer Trials, though perhaps this is in part due to the similar content and the same publisher! Regardless, if you enjoyed Thomas’ work, this will be right up your alley!

The one qualm I had with Self-Made Boys was the occasionally epistolary format at the end of chapters. I found that the letters were a very convenient way to convey essential information concerning the plot, but I would have rather discovered that information in a more natural way. This is certainly a personal preference, though!

~Thank you to Netgalley and Macmillan Children’s Publishing Group for providing me access to this eARC! All opinions are my own.~

wow wow wow !!!

if you happen to be a person who read the Great Gatsby as a teenager and thought, "gosh, this book would've been so much interesting if it was actually gay," do I have the best news for you

Anna-Marie really took the original story and improved it by leaps and bounds. the diversity is amazing! and the author transforming Daisy into an intelligent and intriguing character was such a delight. I always wondered how Daisy might have been written if it was anybody but Fitzgerald writing her. full offense to Fitzgerald tbh

all of the characters that I so desperately wanted to be fleshed out in the original are thoroughly examined in Self-Made Boys. truly I felt complete apathy towards the original Nick; Anna-Marie's Nick is funny, clever, and soft-hearted. (that scene when Gatsby takes Nick to the bar?? literally smiled the whole chapter. the sheer queer joy of it, bless)

I'd rec this book for anybody who
- liked the homoerotic subtext of the original book and maybe wanted a lil more ✨
- wanted to see more of who Nick was when he wasn't overshadowed by Gatsby or Tom
- wanted to know more of who Gatsby really was, as opposed to the rich persona he built for everyone else
- found Daisy a frustrating and flimsy character and wanted more for her
- read Nghi Vo's The Chosen and the Beautiful and thought, "Daisy/Jordan, wow 🤔😍"
- just wants to read something with a cheerful lil 20's flapper vibe
- is hoping for a story where the one main pretentious and rich cishet white guy gets thoroughly Humbled


overall I loved this book and I'm so excited to rec it to more people. this Remixed Classics collection is a delight !!!! thank you Anna-Marie for this absolute gift of a book 🥰

”Back home, such men referred to neighbors whose families had come from Guatemala and Peru as Mexicans without ever bothering to check.”

I would’ve loved to include a happier quote to start off this review, but I was so immersed in this book that I didn’t bookmark much else.

I’ll keep this short so you can read this book for yourself. Self-Made Boys follows Nicolás Caraveo, a trans teen who moves to New York to establish himself as a professional. He meets with his cousin, Daisy, a Latina passing as white, and of course, Jay Gatsby. At a party Jay Gatsby throws, Nick learns that Jay is trans like him. The two become closer, and Nick‘s feelings for Jay become intense and complicated.

I would really, really, love to give more details, but this is one of those books you need to experience for yourself with little information. Given that this is a retelling, those that have read The Great Gatsby already know a lot about the plot and characters.

I would truly recommend this book to anyone. With its connection to history and modern spin, there’s something to like, no matter who you are. So with that, I leave you with one last quote.

“I think we just recognize each other.” He fastened the buttons on the gleaming brown shirt. “Boys like us always know one another about a thousand years before anyone else knows us, don’t we?”

A beautiful retelling! I love Anna Marie McLemore’s books and this was an amazing addition to their catalog of books. The writing is stunning, the characters are fleshed out and realistic, and the story is gripping and enticing.

It’s difficult to begin this review with anything other than: holy crap, that was one of the best books I’ve ever read.

I first read “The Great Gatsby” when I was 15, a sophomore in high school, and I loved it immediately. I wizzed through it in a day when my English teacher had meant for us to take it a chapter at a time. I couldn’t help but be pulled in first by the surface level mystery, romance, and glitz and glamour of the Jazz Age, but also by the criticisms of The American Dream, and Fitzgerald’s take on class, wealth, race, and gender.

When I read what “Self-Made Boys” was about, I was immediately excited. The things that Anna-Marie McLemore “remixed” from the original story are, to me, so seamless and a testament as to why “The Great Gatsby” is beloved by so many different people to this day–it’s simple to find yourself or something you relate to amongst its pages. With “Self-Made Boys,” it’s now even more of a perfect story to me and I truly can’t decide which one I love more.

Nicolás Caraveo is our Nick Carraway. He is a 17-year-old Mexican-American transgender boy from Minnesota. I loved Nicolás, as I knew I would because I loved Nick. He’s our narrator and plays a much bigger role in this remix which I was so happy to see. Jay Gatsby is Nicolás’ neighbor in West Egg, and he is also a transgender boy. Anna-Marie McLemore kept the same sort of vibe of original Gatsby, but elevated him and gave us a bit of a deeper look into what it might have been like to explore gender identity in the 1920s through both him and Nicolás.

Something they wrote in their Author’s Note, which I really appreciated, was, “Whenever possible, I stayed true to likely events, even when they made me cringe … But I’ve also attempted to code and label race, sexual orientation, and gender identity in a way meant to fall between historical realism and contemporary consciousness. Sometimes I made decisions meant to acknowledge and question racism, queerphobia, and transphobia without putting the brutal slurs of the 1920s on the page.”

I think Anna-Marie McLemore did a phenomenal job in their approach to coding and labeling to fall in that in between so it is as historically accurate as possible, while also not being “hidden” from the contemporary reader. I was worried going into a book set in the 1920s starring characters with many different identities not historically accepted, that it might be tough to read. I trusted the author, but I was apprehensive. However, there wasn’t any need for apprehension because what I found was a thoughtful, gentle, and well-educated approach to race, sexual orientation, and gender identity during that time period.

Something I loved overall that was remixed was the race of certain characters. I love that Nick and Daisy (and some other characters that I won’t spoil for you) were Mexican-American. Being Latina myself, it has always felt a little odd to so fiercely love “The Great Gatsby,” not just as a woman, but as a brown person. I could see a few aspects of myself and my family in the original story, mostly tied to the criticisms of The American Dream, but no one looked like me. So to see these characters, now brown and with similar backgrounds to myself, was healing.

Anna-Marie McLemore still managed to find ways to make Daisy and Gatsby frustrate me, of course, but by the end, even I found myself a little in love with the both of them. Not to mention, the journey they take is definitely a different journey than we originally saw, so the same frustrations are absolutely not there.

There is so much I want to say about this book, I feel like it might burst out of me, but I truly mean it when I say that this is a story you need to read for yourself, especially if you loved “The Great Gatsby.” Anna-Marie McLemore does the original story so much justice while also making it completely their own and, dare I say, even making it better.

I want to thank Netgalley, Macmillan Children's Publishing Group, and Feiwel & Friends for allowing me to read this book in exchange for an honest review!!

I have never read The Great Gatsby nor do I have any desire to read the The Great Gatsby. I only know the general idea of the novel. However, I adore retellings. Anna-Marie McLemore masterfully crafted a beautiful retelling of The Great Gatsby. Self-Made Boys is extremely well-written and thought out. Readers can tell they did their research on the time period and the original novel. Self-Made Boys: A Great Gatsby Remix takes the classic novel and brings into the present, while showcasing an extremely important perspective on the American Dream.

I loved all the characters. Admittedly, I found Daisy to be annoying at times and infuriating, especially in regards to her treatment to her cousin. As the story progessed, readers started to see more facets of Daisy. I really love how Anna-Marie McLemore gave authority to Daisy. I feel a lot of Fitzgerald's female characters lack any true authority, which makes them appear to be annoying and infuriating. Overall, I highly recommend checking out Self-Made Boys: A Great Gatasby Remix, even if you did not like the original, because this book is a must read.

Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for an eARC of this title!

What a fun spin on The Great Gatsby! I really enjoyed this book and highly recommend it. I love retellings and I definitely need to visit the other books in the Remixed Classics series.

This story is written with great care and is tremendously beautiful. I rarely give books a five star rating and really consider it a five; I’m usually rounding up from 4.25 or 4.5. This is a true five in my eyes. It was enjoyable and compulsively readable from start to finish.

Nick is a darling character and it was really interesting to see the glitz and glamor of the 1920s from his eyes: a new arrival to New York from his family’s beet farm and recently out as a trans Latinx man in a white community. This book takes a close look at racism, colorism, sexism, classism, homophobia, and more. I was rooting for Nick, Jay, Daisy, & Jordan to all get their happily ever afters.

“We were boys who had created ourselves. We had formed our own bodies, our own lives, from the ribs of the girls we were once assumed to be.”

Nicolás Caraveo’s comfortable now that he’s out as trans in his small Minnesota town, but when it’s time to make a career for himself, he decides he must put his mathematician brain to use and set off for New York City. He’s glad he has his cousin Daisy to help steer him in the right direction, but when he arrives he immediately notices she’s not the same Daisy – at least, not the Latina Daisy he’s always known. Now, as a dawning white-passing socialite, Daisy exposes him to the glitz and glam of 1920’s New York, encroaching on his, once simple, professional plans. With new acquaintances comes excess, and the excess of his neighbor, Jay Gatsby, threatens to undo Nicolás’ plans in more ways than one. He quickly discovers Gatsby’s extravagance is all an elaborate bid for Daisy’s attention, but even more shockingly he learns his neighbor is also a self-made boy… just like him.

In stunning sensory prose, author Anna-Marie McLemore breathes new life into the infamously familiar F. Scott Fitzgerald masterpiece in her latest novel Self-Made Boys: A Great Gatsby Remix. My expectations for this novel couldn’t have been higher – after all, remixing one of America’s most classic, and beloved works of fiction is a daring endeavor. Yet, I was thrilled that McLemore didn’t stop at a simple remix of characters. Instead, through the influence of Nella Larsen's novel Passing, they push the commentary further, honing in on the race and class disparities of the roaring twenties, and how they came to be. I’d dare to say that the way McLemore intricately weaves canonical plot elements with the experiences of marginalized folks acts as an improvement upon the original. Where the original erases the existence of queerness, culture, or race, Self-Made Boys sees this existence, contextualizes it, then outright celebrates it. The careful homage to the history of underground queer spaces creates a safe haven for readers and denies the violent myth that queerness is simply a current fad or
“perversion.” Self-Made Boys honors our existence, and fortifies that it cannot be condensed –we are not new, we have always been here, and we always will be. There’re a million things that this book does so, so right (I mean, I could write a dissertation on its trans or Latine representation alone!), that you’ll honestly just have to go out and pick up a copy for yourself to witness and savor all of its glamor, and gilded glory.

Self-Made Boys: A Great Gatsby Remix releases September 6th, 2022.

(Pine Reads Review would like to thank NetGalley for sending us an ARC in exchange for an honest review. Any quotes are taken from an advanced copy and may be subject to change upon final publication.)

wow wow wow. as someone who didn’t like TGG, i am so surprised that i liked this! i even had to rewatch the leo decaprio movie to remind myself of the original plot… spoiler alert: this book is 100000000% better. the characters were so complex. the world they lived in was so set against them yet something they found a home & themselves in. McLemore handled the characters & this story with such care & i am def going to read their other books!!

It’s always a great feeling when you find a book that keeps you up late because you just need to read “one more chapter.”

As someone who has taught The Great Gatsby on and off for 9 years, I absolutely loved all of the details this book included. There were sentences that were clearly inspired by the words of Fitzgerald, so it felt like a remix without feeling as though I was reading the same exact book with new characters. The romance was wholesome and the character development was beautiful, and I'm so glad that young readers will have a version of Gatsby that's more relatable and diverse than the original novel.

Listen. This is one of my 2022 favorites. It’s Literally Queer Great Gatsby with two trans boys as Nick and Gatsby. I loved it even though it’s historical fiction. If you’re thinking “absolutely yes that’s exactly my alley”, you will not be disappointed.

NOW. If you’re thinking, “absolutely yes that’s exactly my alley, AND I love Anna-Marie McLemore”, I do have bad news, which is that this book does not read like a McLemore book At All. It reads like a Regular Not McLemore book. Is it incredible? Is it amazing? Is it fantastic? Yes to all of the above. McLemore just isn’t writing in their usual style. This reads nothing like LAKELORE.

Still. It’s a five-star read. Pick it up.

Like everything by Anna-Marie McLemore, this book is beautifully written and will move readers deeply. Highly recommended for teens and up.

I don't normally read books that are remixes or re imaginings of classic works. I find the classic works usually superior to the imitators. However, Self-Made Boys takes the Great Gatsby story into a whole new level. It is a suburb rendering of an otherwise familiar tale. McLemore breathes new life into the tale. I found the characters fully developed and the relationships believable and grounded. Nick and Daisy in particular take on a more nuanced and deep role in the story. I highly recommend this work.

This is a romance for the ages. It was beautifully done, so achingly sweet and I couldn't put it down. The writing was simply lyrical. Jumping on the bandwagon of they should add this to high school curriculum right alongside the Great Gatsby.

Thank you #netgalley for an early read of #selfmadeboys

I would like to thank the publisher, Netgalley, and the author for the ARC of this book. I read an advanced copy of this book, so the final edition of the book might be slightly different. All thoughts and opinions are my own, as always.

I honestly had really high hopes for this one, because what’s not to love about a queer The Great Gatsby remix? It had all the components of something I should adore: references to a classic that was the beginning of my literature degree, a massive queer cast, and a writing style that kept my eyes glued to the page. However, I was expecting something closer to a retelling, and maybe that’s on me. This is my first of the classic remixes line, and I wasn’t sure what to expect when it came to how close this book would stick to the original.

I think I would’ve enjoyed this book a lot more had it not been carrying the expectations of a Gatsby retelling. It easily could’ve been a book set in the same time period, with different character names and some other small changes to fully deviate it from Gatsby, and I think I would’ve loved this. Instead, it’s deviations from the original book seemed to hurt it, as I found myself constantly comparing the two. While I adored the massive queer cast, I disliked the plot changes made, and this is especially true for the final few chapters of the book. It almost seemed to make the book too simple or easily resolved, and just didn’t match the feelings that Gatsby brought in me.

My biggest frustration, though, was the jarring contrast between what the characters were doing and their actual age. Now, I haven’t closely studied this time period of American history necessarily, so maybe it was perfectly normal for teenagers to be doing all of this. But it was just hard to stay fully inside the story whenever we were reminded of just how young these characters actually were. It didn’t make any sense to me, and just served to take me out of the book at moments.

Overall, I did enjoy this book, but I don’t know if it ended up making an impression on me, or at least not a particularly positive one. It did, however, convince me to read more of this author’s work, which I’ve been meaning to do! I did really enjoy the writing style and how easily I was able to stay in the story. And overall, I did like what this book tried to do, even if it didn’t entirely work for me. I definitely want to try more of these remixes, but now with slightly different expectations going into them.

Book Report for Self-Made Boys: A Great Gatsby Remix by Anna-Marie McLemore

Cover Story: Achoo
BFF Charm: Natalie Imbruglia x3
Swoonworthy Scale: 6
Talky Talk: It’s a Reeeeemix
Bonus Factor: LGBTQ+ Representation
Relationship Status: Summer Loving Reading

Content Warning: Self-Made Boys features scenes of homophobia and racism (unfortunately) accurate for the 1920s.

Cover Story: Achoo
These are lovely and dashing young men. The number of flowers around them would have my face swollen up and my nose and eyes running like faucets due to allergies, but they look fantastic. (It also reminds me of the Bookstagram trend of using fake flowers in shots, which I’ve never loved. But to each their own!)

The Deal:
Nicolás Caraveo is a newcomer in New York City. He came to the city at the behest of his cousin, Daisy Fabrega-Caraveo, and a chance meeting with a stock broker who wants him to put his math skills to use on the market. Daisy, who’s reinvented herself as Daisy Fay, a white-passing woman, is living the high life thanks to her almost fiance, Tom Buchanan. She sets Nick up in a cottage next to a garish mansion owned by a young man named Jay Gatsby.

When he stumbles home drunk one evening, Nick meets Gatsby and a friendship begins. Gatsby introduces Nick to a world he didn’t know existed, filled with queer folks and trans boys just like Nick—and Gatsby, himself. Soon Nick also comes to the determination that Gatsby’s in love with Daisy, and all of his extravagance is for her. Nick doesn’t like what his cousin’s become since she moved to New York, and he’s not quite sure that she’s worthy of Gatsby’s obsession, but he ultimately wants both of them to be happy, so he’ll do what he can to bring them together.

BFF Charm: Natalie Imbruglia x3
Nick, Daisy, and Gatsby are all interesting people with fascinating stories to tell. But they are SO wrapped up in each other, and the many machinations they have going for and with each other, that it would be super hard to wedge into their group. And, to be honest, I’m not sure I’ve got the patience for that much drama.

Swoonworthy Scale: 6
There’s a lot of chemistry floating around Nick’s life along with all of the illegal booze. That said, the relationships are all a bit muddy and possibly based on a lot of fantasy and/or presumptions that they’re what the various folks “should” be doing, rather than real emotions. I wouldn’t consider much of it swoony, but there are some sweet notes near the end of the novel.

Talky Talk: It’s a Reeeeemix
Self-Made Boys is the fifth book in a remix series that takes classic tales and gives them new life. In this case, The Great Gatsby isn’t glaringly cisgender or white any longer—the main character is Latine and trans, and Gatsby and Daisy are trans and Latine, respectively. It’s lovely to read a classic story with a more diverse cast, but—to be quite honest—The Great Gatsby is not my favorite novel, and even with the changes, Self-Made Boys still felt like a dated reference in a Train song (i.e., it doesn’t quite hold up to a close examination from a reader removed from the era). For a hot second, I thought about re-reading The Great Gatsby to see how close the two books were, but I quickly realized that I no longer have to follow a prescribed summer reading list and kiboshed that idea. (So, you know, I can’t say for sure if Self-Made Boys is close to the original or not.)

I also really missed the magical, fantastical elements McLemore always includes in their novels. They’re so good at weaving magic into their books, and this one was severely lacking of those elements. I’m sure they had to follow a more prescriptive formula with this book, but that doesn’t mean I don’t wish they could have included a little fantasy amongst the 1920s glitz.

Bonus Factor: LGBTQ+ Representation
Although I already called out the transgender rep in this book, there are other characters who are eventually revealed to be queer in a few different ways that make this book more queer than not, and I’m all for that.

Relationship Status: Summer Loving Reading
Although I truly liked your diversity, Book, I still felt like I was back in high school while we were hanging out, prepping for a new school year’s English class. I read YA for the great stories and nostalgia-inducing themes, not to actually feel like a teenager again.

McLemore's queer retelling of the Great Gatsby is fascinating, taking the familiar story and refracting it as though through a kaleidoscope. Taking a traditional "classic" and infusing it with queer and BIPOC characters, McLemore examines the morals and messages of the original novel and its setting.

*4.25 Stars*

Self-Made Boys is a Great Gatsby retelling. And while I know some things about the Great Gatsby, I have never actually read it, nor seen any of its adaptation. But I really like Anna-Marie McLemore's writing so I wanted to read this one.

I really enjoyed this retelling. I loved the fact that both Nick and Gatsby were trans, and that Nick was latino. The representation was on point. I liked the setting and the plot was pretty interesting.
I just felt like some of the things were brushed over a little bit and it happened a bit fast.
Overall though, this was truly enjoyable and I enjoyed it a lot. I definitely recommend this retelling and am looking forward to reading more from McLemore.

This Great Gatsby remix brings the wish fulfillment to the classic story while honoring what was great about the original. Nick is a literally self-made boy, a young trans man whose skill with math has gotten him a job on Wall Street during the Roaring Twenties. His cousin Daisy has found her way into high society by pretending to be white, thin, and empty-headed. When Jay Gatsby comes into their lives, his lavish parties offer a glimpse into a life where Nick and Daisy could be themselves. Beautiful and fun, Self-Made Boys is great for fans of the original and those who wanted more from their favorite characters. Did you like The Chosen and the Beautiful? You'll likely enjoy this book.

This book is hard to review. On the surface, <em>Self-Made Boys</em> has EVERYTHING I normally love:

☑️ lgbtq+ rep, specifically trans, gay, and lesbian
☑️ retelling of an old story but taking out the 'cis white' narrative the original american canon has
☑️ mostly-romantic HEA
☑️ we all read the original book, right? we all knew nick was obsessed with gatsby, right?
☑️ that COVER

But... alas, while Anna-Marie McLemore is a good writer, and I was genuinely impressed with some of the prose, I'm not this is a story that can be told for a YA audience and with so few pages.. There are just too many things to tie up, and the nature of the YA genre doesn’t lend itself to this source material very easily.

There were two things that AMA did well: the way that gender and sexual orientation was approached in this novel was stellar, and the "soft" romance element was very present.

<b>CAUTION: SPOILERS AHEAD</b>

On the other hand… Borrowing some phrasing from AMA's author's note at the end of the novel, here -- while this is a "window" novel for me, in that I will never share the life experience of a non-white, non-cis person (thus, it's only a window into their experiences) like the character's AMA is writing about, I felt like the depth that a YA can explore more complex themes is usually deeper than <em>Self-Made Boys</em> offers.
Plenty of YA novels have explored these themes in great and meaningful detail, but I felt like aside from the obvious gross comments made by Tom (and Nick’s bosses), a lot of the potential discussion was glossed over until Nick could have his big stand-up-for-himself moment. Is this because <em>Self-Made Boys</em> is YA and AMA wanted to focus more on the love story, or because AMA didn't plan to go that hard in a novel with this small page count? I don't know -- the only other work of AMA's I've read is the short story "Roja" in [b:All Out: The No-Longer-Secret Stories of Queer Teens throughout the Ages|35140599|All Out The No-Longer-Secret Stories of Queer Teens throughout the Ages|Saundra Mitchell|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1514494195l/35140599._SY75_.jpg|53278915].

Maybe I'm missing the mark here, but I can't help but wonder what more we could have gotten if this novel had been longer.

I don't know; I really don't know 🤷

(Also: Gatsby is not believably 19 in this novel. Nick is not believable 17. None of the characters are believably teenagers because too many of the original Gatsby elements were kept to make their younger ages make sense).