This book is SO good - like SO SO SO good.

Erica is recovering from a divorce while also learning and trying to understand that she is trans. She's helped along in this process by the incredible Abigail - a 17year old trans girl that actually decided to come out by running a newspaper ad! Even though these two are both at entirely different stages I love how they just allow each other to be. No pressure, no reasons to hide - they both are seen for exactly who they are.

When we finally get to THE twist - and well, I was incredibly blown away and just the way that the community ended up coming together was absolutely incredible and inspiring.

Thank you so much to NetGalley and Crooked Media Reads for this e-arc in exchange for my honest opinion!

This was utterly phenomenal! I loved this book so much and felt like the characters were in my day to day world. It was written so evocatively that every line just snuggled up inside my brain and it will stay there forever. It seriously touched my heart and wont let go!
This was a masterful debut novel. The author clearly knows her way around a a story and it was magnificent and emotional, heartbreaking and healing. I cannot wait for more from her! Definitely an author to watch closely!

Thank you to the publishers and NetGalley for the ARC of this title. I have long enjoyed Emily St. James' pop culture coverage and critical work so I was excited to hear that she'd be publishing a work of fiction. This is a wonderful debut about yes, two trans women but also small midwestern towns, the sisterhood between women and figuring out who you are.

Abigail is 17, outspoken, DGAF and the only trans girl at her small town South Dakota high school, living with her sister after running away from her less than accepting parents. She's dating a popular guy in school, Caleb, who is from a conservative family and somehow has made friends with Megan, a young Democrat who has a lawyer father and is trying to help a Democrat get elected to office, Helen Swee. Abigail thinks no one really likes her, but she's magnetic and everyone actually loves her even if she does do teenager things that blow up her life at times. It all makes sense and being in her perspective is so funny and real. She also is somehow Erica's "trans mom."

Erica is the school's English teacher who comes out to Abigail first, and for a while is the only one she's out to. Eventually through going to support group, having an unconventional friendship with Abigail, reconnecting with her ex-wife via community theatre, she comes into her own self and comes out to more folks.

I can't say much more to not spoil things but I loved this somewhat contemporary novel (it takes place in the fall before the election of 2016) even with the Cubs slander. This book is about understanding yourself, finding sisterhood and the political nature of all of it. The way deadnaming is handled is genius and actually there is only one instance of deadnaming on page and it has a powerful impact (again can't say too much more without spoiling). Anyways, trans people have been here, if you think you don't know someone trans, you probably do, you just might not be making it safe for them to be themselves.

Amazing debut novel filled with love and hope. I am so happy I got to read this early. It comes at such a difficult time in the world. A message of how important people are as human beings and how we all deserve to be the best versions of ourselves! The story is charming, sad, but ultimately happy. I loved getting to know the characters and their stories.

I requested this for consideration for Book Riot's All the Books podcast for its release date. After sampling several books out this week, I decided to go with a different book for my review.

Woodworking is a rare debut. Telling the story of a trans teen and her trans English teacher in a small town grappling with the uncertainties in an election cycle, Woodworking is real, but hopeful. Informative, but emotional. It is a story we all need in order to reflect on what makes us uncomfortable and why and what it means to truly be yourself in an increasingly politicized world.

What happens when a trans kid comes school? Woodworking examines the ramifications in a small Midwestern town. A teacher comes to terms with their identity and looks for help, a relationship breaks and is mended, a previously hidden person is outed... While everyone is at a different part of the journey, Woodworking reminds us that trans people are among us and always have been, even if we never noticed.

Full disclosure: I mistakenly thought this book was written by Emily St. John Mandel and was super eager to read since I love her writing, but I’m glad to report that Emily St. James also made a huge fan out of me with this remarkable debut!

The characters were so amazing and vivid. I love that backstories were explored thoroughly, in some cases driving more character development and in other cases explaining limited character development.

I was recommending this before I even finished reading. One of the best debuts I’ve read in years!

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an advance reader copy in exchange for an honest review.

This was a stunning book. What a fantastic debut. I think this is a book everyone should read. It’s beautiful and heartbreaking and hopeful and enraging all at once. I loved all these characters and they will stay with me a long time.

"Woodworking" is one of those books that will leave a deep mark on the reader, and I can't be happier. The story follows Erica Skyberg, an newly divorced English teacher who is coming to terms with her transness. The coming out is also spurred by a 17 year old trans girl who bravely came out in their small town through an ad in the paper.
St James weaves different perspectives completely naturally, using different mediums to refer to the women's past and how it truly feels to let go of that.
This debut is ferocious, it's about heritage, it's about pride and ultimately, love for oneself and your community.

This review is based on an ARC of Woodworking which I received courtesy of NetGalley and the publisher (Zando/Crooked Media Reads).

One of the great strengths of literature (and my main justification for the amount of pleasure reading I do) is its ability to give readers an in-depth analysis of a lifestyle or station of life that they may be unfamiliar with. Despite considering myself a shaky ally, living by the notion "just be a kind human," Woodworking took my understanding of transgender and gender dysphoria one step further. I admit that there is a lot I was missing, and judgements that I was making.

While not outstanding in terms of literary merit, Woodworking is yet an important novel for its content and humanity. It is gripping, twisting, touching, and hopeful. It is hard, and truthful.

Woodworking is not a novel of gender or sex, but of humans as unique as you, me, and Joe down the road.

WOODWORKING by Emily St. James is outstanding; it's one of my favorite 2025 reads so far. This novel does not read as a debut: the writing is sharp, the characters distinct. The main POVs of Erica, the transgender teacher who's accepting her gender later in life, and Abigail, the high school student who has been out as trans from a young age, are well developed with their different journeys contrasting and complimenting each other at different times. There's something especially poignant about Erica's envy of Abigail, already living her truth as a teen, and Erica's repeated ignoring of what this has cost Abigail (her parents; she lives with her sister Jennifer). Abigail's voice is perfection--she sounds like many of my students. I felt like I knew her.

From a writing standpoint, I want to point out something Emily St. James does that may go unnoticed but makes a significant impact. In the chapters written from Erica's POV, the author uses third person. This ensures we, the readers, are accustomed to the character being referred to as / named Erica with she/her pronouns. When Erica's deadname or the wrong pronouns are used, it feels jarring. (I also love how St. James uses the grayed out boxes when Erica's deadname is used.) This close third person POV of Erica allows us to be closer to who she really is versus how she is perceived by (some) others. In Abigail's POV chapters, we get first person, which highlights her voice and how she feels versus how she acts or what she says. It's appropriately immersive for this teen character.

In addition to strong writing and great storytelling, I'll be using WOODWORKING to help my writing students deepen their understanding of POV and authorial choices. I love this novel and highly recommend it!

3 ⭐️. each of these characters annoyed the hell out of me, but also warmed my heart. they are complex, complicated, messy AF and ultimately you wouldn't help but want to root for them.

thank you to Crooked Media Reads, Zando & NetGalley for an advance reading copy in exchange for an honest review.

this was a good story & set a very lovely group of characters, but i'm afraid it was a tad bit too long - it could definitely do with some editing, as there is little to no plot and it does feel a little meandering at times.

When I heard the guys on Pod Save America talk about this book as part of their CrookedMediaReads imprint, I knew I had to read it. I have long been a fan of the author’s writing on pop culture across various websites. This was a truly lovely story about a high school teacher, Erica, in her mid-30s and recently divorced who has realized she is trangender. In her small town in South Dakota, she knows exactly one transgender person, a teenage girl in one of her classes, Abigail. Erica tells Abigail she is trans, and Abigail reluctantly agrees to help Erica navigate her baby steps into this new-to-her world, but living in their conservative small town makes life extremely difficult for both of them. I absolutely loved how the book shows the difference between Erica slowly and gingerly accepting her identity later in life vs Abigail who has always known and accepted her identity and began transitioning as early as she could. As the book progresses, we meet other transgender characters, including a trans woman who is completely closeted - “passing” as a cisgender woman - a phenomenon that gives the book its title - when trans people fade into the woodwork, allowing them to exist in society without any prejudice but without the benefit of a shared trans community. This book was frequently funny, often touching, and felt very honest and real. I’m giving this 4 stars instead of 5 just because the teacher-student friendship/relationship feels a little squishy in terms of appropriateness (that is acknowledged in the book), but I really do recommend it and hope it is widely read.

I absolutely loved this one! I thought it was funny and witty in the best ways. The nuance regarding gender was enlightening. I loved the main characters too. I gave this 4.5/5 stars

I picked this up because the book is set in South Dakota and, here and there, I need to read something that takes me home. And this did, right to my home town, right to the streets I used to walk with my friends. For good and bad. The author noted they didn’t set out to write a political book, but one of sisterhood in places where you may not think, and I think it was accomplished, even set against the backdrop of a state election. From Helen to Constance to Abigail to Brooke to Bernadette to Danielle to Erica to Megan, a complicated story of womanhood is weaved and it is painful and hopeful, maybe especially for those girls that feel different in a state that feels so isolating.

a moving, insightful, and funny novel that explores trans identity set against the backdrop of the 2016 election.

woodworking follows erica, a teacher who has just discovered her trans identity, and abigail, a trans teenager who wants nothing more than to leave mitchell, their tiny town. their unlikely friendship, sparked up because of their shared identity, drives this book as we see them grapple with their identity and their relationships. this book focuses on both on big and bold; trans identity and politics, while also being able to delve into minute relationships and introspection. one late-book plot tiwst

i loved the writing, especially for abigail. very snappy, direct, and funny, and she has such a clear, identifiable voice. i love how abigail was unafraid to be violent, messy, loud. erica's pov was to me less enjoyable, but i still found it moving. i think that discovering who you are after years of living a lie is always deeply scary, but watching erica journey to becoming who she truly is, whether it's shopping in the women's section or wearing nail polish out in public, is inspiring. erica and abigail's relationship was well-executed, truly the heart of this novel. their transness may have brought them together, but they were able to develop a real, meaningful connection.

a heartwarming, touching, and great debut novel by st. james, and a book we need in this time more than ever. a great read to kick off my women's history month reading.

thanks to netgalley and zando for the arc

I wanted to like, nay, love Woodworking. I was excited at the prospect of reading this novel, especially during these increasingly difficult time for minorities and heavy governmental censorship. It felt like the right story at the right time. Spoiler: I didn't love Woodworking. I finished reading it a couple of weeks ago and still haven't come around to writing a review.

Woodworking uses fiction to explore trans identity, love, family and parenting (the good and the very bad), political and religious views, and the freedom to choose. The title refers to the act of disappearing into the woodwork to shed one's birth gender and the identity those around a trans person have come to expect from (and impose on) them to live the second chapter of one's life as their true identity elsewhere, far away from the place and people of origin. In doing so, it gives not only gives a voice to the transgender community through three distinct characters living very different lives but also opens up the discussion of the difficulties of stitching an existence together from two seemingly opposite identities. This is a novel that questions and lays out how life can happen for a trans person, never forcing a particular path, never erasing the different ways and means that lead to how one's life turns out.

The novel's main focus is the very unlikely and inadvisable friendship between trans teenager Abigail and their teacher, Erika (still living as a man). I shan't pretend otherwise: I couldn't get on board with this friendship. Beyond the very unwise and dangerous crossing of boundaries between teacher and student, I was perplexed by how rapid and intense the relationship was. Late-night texting; mutual best friend declarations and jealousy reminded me of fifteen-year olds, not of the way an adult in their mid-thirties would behave. While I had empathy for Erika as a grownup searching for herself, I had to come to terms that she was not at all in a headspace to be a teacher or even a spouse when she fell right back in with her now pregnant ex-wife for a steamy and lasting affair. I also struggled with the abortion despite being pro-choice. It felt like too much of a push to fit the puzzle piece in there. I see how the author wanted to underline the importance of choice for women, no matter the gender they were born, and appreciated the message but it was clumsily written into the narrative.

Besides Brooke's, the character's voices didn't particularly appeal to me, either - I even grew annoyed with Abigail's marked cliché teen speak (in first person, nonetheless). But I must admit I was glad to see Emily St. James take on a more realistic and cautious approach for the end of the book, undoing what needed to be undone and putting the main characters back on the right track to figure out how to and with whom to move forward in the present-day world, one that is tragically becoming less kind and less accepting of the trans community. I appreciate the trans narratives and the lenses they were looked through in Woodworking, I just didn't click with the novel itself as it was presented to me. Sometimes, these things just happen in literature.

"The cruelest thing about what you did is that you robbed yourself of definition. You only behaved rationally in the face of everything you had to face. But to disappear into the woodwork in the name of safety is still to disappear."

I've been a fan of Emily St. James' cultural criticism since her AV Club days, and it's such a delight to see how her perspective comes across as a fiction writer as well. This has a really snappy quality to it, and although the plot arc feels a little overly mapped at times, it's hard to get mad about seeing the dominoes falling when the plot's this fun to follow along. I basically devoured this over the course of a few commutes, and there's some really lovely use of different perspectives (1st vs. 2nd vs. 3rd) across the characters that makes some of the themes come across well.