Dress Codes for Small Towns by Courtney C. Stevens

It’s a profoundly loving look at friendship, the kind of friendship where friends truly support each other and give each other room to grow, change, and figure life out. There is SO MUCH to love about this novel. She dresses “like a boy,” is at times mistaken for a boy (or just seen as one of the guys), isn’t sure who she’s more interested in kissing, Woods or Janie Lee, and is willing to be herself and grapple with whatever that means all under the watchful and judging eyes of everyone in town. In their small town of Otters Holt, Kentucky, Billie, the minister’s kid, stands out. They love schemes and they love each other. Billie, Janie Lee, Woods, Fifty, Davey, and Mash are inseparable. Billie and her friends call themselves the Hexagon. Give me gray areas, and uncertainty, and questioning things any day over black and white supposed truths.

Like the summary up there says, this is a story about the gray areas in life-you know, where everything real and complex and interesting resides. Looking for some picture that captures those feelings seems way easier than trying to find actual coherent words to say about this fantastic book. I am not one for posting GIFs in reviews-that’s just not me-but for once I wish that just a GIF would be sufficient-one that captured the feeling of elation and love that reading this book inspired. Readers will be drawn to Billie as she comes to terms with the gray areas of love, gender, and friendship, in this John Hughes-esque exploration of sexual fluidity. For Billie-a box-defying dynamo-it’s not that simple. Except it’s not just about keeping the peace, it’s about understanding love on her terms-this thing that has always been defined as a boy and a girl falling in love and living happily ever after. So she keeps her conflicting feelings to herself, for fear of ruining the group dynamic. Always considered “one of the guys,” Billie doesn’t want anyone slapping a label on her sexuality before she can understand it herself.

Dress Codes for Small Towns by Courtney C. Stevens