I was bamboozled by the cover of The Queer Girl Is Going to be Okay. I really thought I was going to get a graphic novel. What I got instead was still pretty good. The Queer Girl is Going to Be Okay (phew... that's a title) is a sweet story about Queer love in it's many forms. Set in Houston, our mc Dawn thinks maybe, if she can capture it, film it, interview the people who have it, queer love will be hers someday. Or, at least, she'll have made a documentary about it. A documentary that, hopefully, will win Dawn a scholarship to film school. Many obstacles stand in the way of completing her film, but her best friends Edie and Georgia are there to help her reach her goal, no matter what it takes. And, maybe, just maybe, everything *will* be okay.

Thank you to Netgalley and Levine Querido for providing me with a review copy.

i've never read a book that explains life for a queer teenager in the south better. i do think this would've better benefitted as a short story. the plot could have been condensed to around 100 pages. simply a sweet read about the different kinds of queer love that exist in the world.

A cute coming-of-age about queerness, found family and the power of friendship. We are presented with the story of these three protagonists, each with their own personal challenges and personalites, while one of them, Dawn, is working on her documentary about queer love.

The book intercalates the story with excerpts from the documentary, which I found a little stalling of the plot. Also, by the end, some characters and situations seem undeveloped, even though the sentiment is also that "live goes on" and nothing can be definite, there's literal plots that are pushed away for the final act and that felt a little undermining.

Besides that, this book is a solid recreating a very real queer experience but, at the same time, with a bit of fairytale-like resolutions.

"The Queer Girl is Going to Be Okay" by Dale Walls is a touching and heartwarming tale that explores the complexities of friendship, longing for love, and the pursuit of one's dreams. While I may not have been the book's primary target audience, I found myself drawn into the vibrant world of Dawn, Edie, and Georgia.

While I may not have personally connected with the book on the same level as its intended audience, I appreciated its authenticity and the importance of representation in literature. "The Queer Girl is Going to Be Okay" is a testament to the power of resilience and friendship, serving as a reminder that, ultimately, everything will be okay. Dale Walls has crafted a heartwarming story that will undoubtedly resonate with those seeking genuine portrayals of queer friendships and the pursuit of dreams.

A big thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for providing this arc!

I had very high expectations for this book since I loved the cover and all the representation, but unfortunately I couldn’t connect with the writing and wasn’t able to enjoy the reading experience. While I absolutely *adored* the fact that this book focuses around queer love and puts queer friendship at the center of it all, the pacing felt a bit jarring at times and the plot (that has a weird flow) kept me from being engaged to it.
Still, I could see a younger audience enjoying this book, but unfortunately this one wasn’t for me.

Queer Love. Something Dawn wants, desperately, but does not have. But maybe, if she can capture it, film it, interview the people who have it, queer love will be hers someday. Or, at least, she'll have made a documentary about it.

Powerful and moving. A must-read.

This book was in the Read Now category on Netgalley! The colourful cover intrigued me.

Dawn is directing and producing a short film about queer love by interviewing several people around her. I enjoyed following her through the process. I found that it was presented in a very sympathetic way, maintaining a safe space.

There isn't much at stake in this book. We simply follow the daily lives of queer high school students. At times, I would have liked it to have more pace.

If you're looking for a fun and inclusive read, don't hesitate :)

THE QUEER GIRL IS GOING TO BE OKAY by Dale Walls has a lot going for it. The novel centers queer and trans characters; friendship is extremely important; found family matters; and art is necessary. The friendship between Dawn, Edie, and Georgia is what makes this story work; without it, there would be no heart. The way these three girls fight, love, and help each other is inspiring. I also loved the way queerness was centered and discussed as an "of course" rather than something to be hidden among the friends. I was a bit thrown by the way the fact that one character is trans was handled. It had a strong feeling of that fact being revealed when it was as a "surprise" or a "twist." I don't know that the author planned it that way, but it's the affect the timing had for me.

Overall, the book fell a bit flat, cramming too much in, which created some underdeveloped plots and characters. Some of the writing also felt really "green" with characters winking at each other all the time and the some language being overused. Still, we need more stories like this and I will watch to see what else Dale Walls writes.

I would have devoured The Queer Girl is Going to Be Okay had it been a collection of people defining queer love. The little “clips” from the documentary were so precious. That alone is a five-star read.

As much as I enjoyed the documentary plot line, I didn’t always understand it.

There was a lot of name dropping / talking about films. I have not seen or even heard of most of the movies talked about. At times it felt like I was on the outside of a conversation, listening in.

That being said, I loved the representation: Dawn’s sureness in her identity, Edie’s courage with her brother, and Georgia’s carefree free-falling into love. (I know I say that often, but it's true, okay?)

All in all, The Queer Girl Is Going To Be Okay was good, but not great.

Bottom line: Am I just a hater?

I really wanted to love this book and went in with high hopes. The subject matter isn’t the problem, but the book itself is hard to follow. The pacing is odd and frequently changes and it was difficult to discern the timeline or what was happening and when. I didn’t feel like enough time was spent on any of the three main characters and didn’t find myself caring too much for either of them. None of the stories but Dawn’s was wrapped in in a real or satisfying way. Some of the plot points are handled poorly as well, with Dawn getting over a traumatic experience too quickly to be realistic. The writing itself seemed juvenile, even for YA. Overall I think this book had potential but squandered it.

This story shows the amazing diversity of LGBTQ+ people through its characters. The author is dedicated to showing different experiences. Each character represents a different part of being LGBTQ+. There's Dawn, a brave transgender girl; Georgia, a confident lesbian; and Edie, who's queer and shows that sexual orientation is complex.

The story not only talks about LGBTQ+ experiences but also the challenges everyone faces while figuring out who they are and growing up. The characters' journeys are like a woven picture, showing how they understand their LGBTQ+ identity while dealing with growing up. They also have dreams and deal with family relationships.

When I think about how this story would have helped me when I was younger, I know it would have meant a lot. Seeing different LGBTQ+ people in the story would have helped me feel understood and okay with myself. This book could help young people feel like they belong and understand themselves better. It's a special book that's not just fun but also teaches important things.

What a sweet book. Dawn, Edie and Georgia are three graduating senior queer best friends in Houston, sorting out their own lives and relationships against the backdrop of Dawn's documentary-in-progress, that's up for a scholarship-winning big prize at the Austin Film Festival. The OPPOSITE of hilarity ensues, besides the times the group's youth and strong friendship gives them ten minutes to let down their hair and laugh between family, school, and self-created crises.

I cared whether Dawn got her movie done, I wanted to see what happened with Georgia and her crush, and I felt invested in Edie's outcomes with her conservative Christian parents. (Although I was less interested in her as a character than any of the others in the book, even the more minor ones.) Walls' writing is much more lyrical that that in most YA novels, and it suited the art and media interests of the main characters. Sometimes I could just focus on that and it moved the story along no matter what was going on.

I enjoy books with a strong sense of place, and don't read that many set in Houston, so this was interesting.

An entertaining, hopeful book about queer joy. Though this book shows its characters suffering under transphobic and homophobic violences of varying degrees, it always focuses on the fact that these characters ultimately deserve love, happiness, and fulfillment. I loved watching these characters go through teenage angst and find themselves more clearly, fall in love in a hundred different ways. I also enjoyed that the characters consistently were the focus, not their relationships. It was always about how they were feeling, how they were experiencing the world, not about getting us squealing over their romances. It was important that they loved, not who they loved.

Highly recommend for queer teens.

i love talking about queer love. i love how we, as a community, are able to free ourselves from the restrictive definition of “love” dominated by white, heterosexual (including alloromantic and allosexual), cisgender and able-bodied thinkers. how we immerse ourselves in the love of our friends, our partners, our (sometimes chosen) families and anyone else we might love.

so what is queer love?

“it’s resistance.
your best friend in the entire world telling you something at 3:00 a.m. something they’ve never said out loud before.
yearning, dude, just yearning.”

“the queer girl is going to be okay” by dale walls is about a trans girl called dawn attempting to juggle finding (romantic) love and caring for her father with depression, while editing a short film for a festival to win a scholarship for film school. it’s a novel that shows us the many facets of queer love. queer love is the love dawn has for her friends, edie and georgia, who have their own struggles which are explored in this novel through multiple third person limited narrations, one for each of the best friends. edie’s christian parents expect her to be perfect: straight As, heterosexual, simply a daughter to brag about. georgia wants to be a writer, but her anxiety surrounding college applications and her friends leaving her is huge and all-consuming.

what i loved most about this novel is that queer friendship was at its centre, and one of the key answers to the question what queer love is. to me, queer love is not inherently romantic, it can be (and for many people, this is the main form of queer love they experience) platonic, finding community among other queer people, who you love deeply. (queer) platonic love is beautiful, and i love to see it being celebrated in fiction, so reading this was very validating.

the characters were all complex with unique issues that made it interesting to read about them, and i enjoyed reading from all three perspectives, although the slightly odd pacing of this novel made certain plot lines quite difficult to follow.

unfortunately, the rest of the book fell a bit flat for me. the plot felt a bit jumbled, and although i did appreciate seeing the three distinct point of views (in third person, which i always enjoy), it made the narrative feel a bit messy, as it would jump mid-chapter and leave me a little confused. some plot lines were satisfyingly resolved. others were resolved off-page and others were left hanging in the air by the end of the novel, which i did not enjoy as much. i usually like open ends, but in this case, the sudden ending caught me off guard and i felt like there could have been some more character development.

i also sadly did not really like the writing style. like the plot, it felt a bit jumbled, with confusing sentence structures and strange descriptions, as well as some jarring repetitions that took away from the flow of the novel.

dale walls clearly has many interesting ideas and a talent for developing endearing, flawed and lovable characters so i’m interested in what she releases in the future while acknowledging that this wasn’t for me in terms of plot and writing!

“people think it’s the same. they want to say we’re just like everyone else, but we’re not. queerness is itself. queer longing is specific”
and so is, in my opinion, queer love.
it’s beautiful, it’s revolutionary, it can be anything you want and i love talking about it.

thank you to netgalley for the arc!

This was such a great debut novel from Dale Walls, it had everything that I was hoping for in the description. The story felt realistic and I enjoyed the friendship going on in this story.

First thing that I should’ve realised before even reading is that I’m not the target/intended audience. I didn’t connect with a lot of what was happening because of that, which is fine, but it brought down the overall reading experience for me.

The representation is amazing and I liked the characters, I think there’s something in each of them that will speak to you as the reader. I think the characters definitely triumphed the plot and the writing, but again this might be down to the age range of this book being pitched lower than myself.

I didn’t have a bad time at all, and would definitely recommend this for a younger audience!

This book follows Dawn, Edie and Georgia as they each face their own obstacles before leaving for college. Dawn is trying to win a film festival with a documentary about queer people and their experiences. Edie is trying to figure out her relationship with her non-binary partner while trying to fit into her parents’ golden child image. While Georgia tries to figure out what she wants from her future while starting a new relationship and dealing with family drama.

I really enjoyed this book, the characters were quite relatable and I’d love to have read this when I was in highschool. Dawn, Edie and Georgia aren’t perfect, but they felt quite real because if it.

This was such a cozy and heartwarming story about friendship and facing new beginnings as a teenager. Thank you so much Netgalley and Levine Querido for providing me with this arc.

[Thanks to NetGalley and the author Dale Walls for providing me with an ARC copy of The Queer Girl is Going to be Okay]

I must admit that I requested this book impulsively after seeing its fabulous cover, but I stayed till the end for the meaningful content. I'm sure this book will save teenagers girls' lives, empower them, make them feel seen. This book screams "you are not alone, girl!"

This book has everything in it: a beautiful friendship between three high school girls, family issues, queer representation and relationships, school problems, but above it all, love.

Love is everywhere between these pages, and I can see how much love the author put into their book: queer love, love between family members, love between friends (let's not forget that friendship is a type of love), love for one's passions, love for one's life, body, and identity. I felt all of it.

Love is also the main theme of Dawn's documentary, which is what ties Dawn, Edie, and Georgia's stories together as we follow them in their daily life.

Since I'm in my mid-twenties, I'm not part of the target audience of this book anymore, but this didn't stop me from deeply caring for these three girls: I cheered for them and cried with them while following them along the difficult journey that is the last year of high school. Each one of them has something to learn.

Dawn has to learn that her dreams are worth pursuing and that working towards her goals doesn't necessarily mean leaving her family behind; Georgia knows she wants to be a poet and a writer but she's afraid she's not good enough and that she hasn't done enough in school; Edie has to learn to fight for herself and her loved ones, and that sometimes taking care of yourself means keeping a distance from people who hurt you even if they claim to love you.

The book structure is made of chapters each one adopting one of the girl's points of view. I loved how Edie, Georgia and Dawn perspectives blended to form a complete and detailed picture of their friendship and daily life. It made the characters feel very dynamic and real, as if I had known them in real life.

Another part I deeply enjoyed are the excerpts from Dawn's documentary about queer love: I really liked listening to all these different stories and perspectives. I think this strategy also helps the reader see Dawn's documentary coming to life as she proceeds to watching the clips and editing them.

I recommend this book to anyone, no matter their age. This is a great debut novel, and I can't help but wonder what Dale Walls might write next!

The characters in this debut novel are engaging and have interesting backstories and character arcs. It is inspiring to watch them struggle and emerge victorious from the realistically-portrayed challenges of growing up queer.

I think this is an author to look out for... but unfortunately, I don't think their standard of writing is quite there yet. There are moments of genuine luminosity, but also confusing sentences with nebulous metaphors. This has the bones of an excellent novel, but it needs more work to get it there. With a good edit to remove basic errors like it getting dark in one paragraph and the sun setting in the next, and the architectural impossibility of a cylindrical ceiling, I'd raise it another star.

Overall, it was a good story and I wanted to love it, but the writing kept jarring me out of being completely engaged.

— 3 stars ✰

there’s a lot to like about this book. the representation, obviously. but also the complicated familial relationships, the struggles of applying to college and preparing for change, and more.

i graduated high school last year and i remember being really stressed about college apps. did i do enough? should i apply to more? what’s plan b or c or d? and i felt like this book did a good job of portraying the whirlwind that is fall and winter of senior year.

it was also really ... refreshing? to see how different all the characters were.
➳ dawn is a transgender girl with a passion for filmmaking. she’s constantly on the search for love but struggles with finding someone who makes her feel loved. her mother died a bit ago and her father struggles with depression.
➳ georgia is lesbian and seemingly madly in love with her girlfriend, jill. she’s worried about what might change after she graduates, and even more worried that she might not get into college. her mother is a single mom and has a new guy around, simone, who georgia finds herself ... struggling with.
➳ edie is queer, dating ben who is nonbinary. her parents are very christian and oppose queerness, so she hides it from them. this creates issues with her and ben, which she has to work through.

the relationships were complex and all so different, so i didn’t get tired of reading about all of their dynamics. as someone who doesn’t face the struggles of being queer, i found it really interesting to read about situations they find themselves in. i hadn’t even considered some of it before, so it was eye opening.

with that being said, there was also a bit that i didn’t like about this book.

number one was the writing. admittedly, i’m not really the target audience for this - i probably would have loved it if i read it five years ago. but the writing felt very juvenile for a book dealing with complicated topics. it felt choppy at times and the pacing was a little weird? the author also did a lot of showing rather than telling - paragraphs would summarize a conversation, where i would’ve rathered read the dialogue.

more on the pacing, the story overall felt fast paced, but some part were extremely fast and others felt extremely slow. it felt like there were some unnecessary details thrown in some spots. my biggest complaint here was dawn moving on after knox. she went through a pretty traumatizing experience with him, and said she needed to focus on herself, but also found herself falling for collin very fast. it just threw me off.

overall this book wasn’t bad, but it was very forgettable for me. i enjoyed reading about characters so unlike myself, and so different from what you normally see in books. i’d probably even recommend this to someone younger looking to read an interesting lgbtq+ story. like i said, i would’ve enjoyed this a lot more if i was five years younger, so take that as you will.