YA Book Club is finally here to round out your February on a positive note!

And it’s going to be very positive, because Mary and Emily both LOVED their pick for this month: Not So Pure and Simple by Lamar Giles. We hope you had the opportunity to read along with us, but if you didn’t, go read the book and then COME BACK, because spoilers to follow.

Read on at your own risk.

Mary: Hello!! I’m so excited to talk about this book.

Emily: Yes! We both finished it, like, this morning so it is FRESH and we're ready to go.

Mary: So this month we read Not So Pure and Simple by Lamar Giles. The book follows Del, a typical high school dude, who joins a Purity Pledge at his mom’s church to impress and grow closer to his crush, Kiera. However, things get weird when the other kids at church start asking Del to get info for them from his sex Ed class. That’s the basic premise, but this book is doing much more than that! It tackles complex topics like toxic masculinity, teen pregnancy, and patriarchal standards surrounding sexuality.

Emily: Yes, I thought it covered all of these complex issues in a really thoughtful and fresh way.

Mary: I think it’s pretty apparent I loved this book and think it was asking a lot of hard questions, which is good!

Emily: Totally. Should we break it down by topic maybe?

Mary: Yes! What first?

Emily: Let’s talk about toxic masculinity.

Mary: Woof! The big one.

Emily: Because I would argue this is a feminist book from a male perspective, which I think is pretty cool, especially for YA.

Mary: Yes, say more about that.

Emily: Well, obviously our protagonist is Del, a teenage boy, and this is really a story about growth for him in so many ways. He doesn't realize how immature he was throughout the novel until the end of the book, and because we're reading things from his perspective, sometimes we don't see that either. For instance, with his job.

Mary: Monte Fishto’s.

Emily: Yeah! He works at a fish fry place and is constantly complaining about how bad his boss is and how he never gets shifts so he never has money.

Mary: But he’s a super crappy worker.

Emily: But then at the end of the novel, when he has to start working hard and doing his job, he realizes he was being a crappy worker and so he kept getting sent home because he was fucking around on the job. Like looking at his phone and goofing off and not working. Because... he's a teenage boy.

Mary: And he’s rewarded for working hard by getting more shifts, more money, more responsibility! And he finds out he actually thinks his boss is cool.

Emily: HOW does this connect to toxic masculinity though, Emily? I'M GETTING THERE. One of his big realizations regarding his maturity is his realizations that in many ways he acts entitled. Yes, he is a black kid so of course he has some disadvantages, but as a man, he still has privileges. By the end of this novel, he's forced to check his privilege.

Mary: For sure. He also, in regards to his work, let’s his coworker Mya do most of the work while he goofs off. Mya automatically has higher expectations placed on her, by Del but also by their boss. I wonder if Mya ever got rewarded for her hard work.

Emily: Poor Mya gets ignored a lot.

Mary: And yes, Del is certainly privileged in some ways (his family seems financially sound and they care about him), but he also struggles throughout the book with how to reconcile his feelings about sex, masculinity (and maybe even more specifically black masculinity), and his own personal feelings.

I found it really interesting that Del received so many messages about add from different sources and they were all different. Del’s dad seemed weirdly congratulatory at the thought of his son having sex. The church felt sex was taboo—to an extreme extent. At school, Del’s classmates and friends boasted about their sexual encounters (but also engaged in “lying on their dicks,” or falsifying their sexual history. I loled).

Everyone had something different to say about what Del SHOULD be doing, and one of the throughlines of the book is Del trying to figure out what he wants, and sort through all that info.

Emily: Right which is why I think he THOUGHT he wanted Kiera.

Mary: She was hot, and all the dudes wanted her, but Del didn’t really know her at all, did he?

Emily: Kiera was a trophy to him. She was the hot girl that everyone wanted and was hard to get. But when you actually see them interact with each other, I think it's really clear they don't have anything in common. Like she DOESN'T LIKE FANTASY OR COMICS, and those are things Del is really into.

Mary: Kiera was lame tbh. I guess she has her own things going on, which we don’t get to see, but if someone came to me and said they hate everything I like… I’d be out.

Mary after she learns how boring Kiera is

Emily: She just seemed very judgmental.

Mary: A holier than thou vibe.

Emily: But all I can really say for sure is that she was not right for Del. That was pretty clear early on.

Mary: Definitely—and it was clear early on that Mya might be good for Del! But he was dumb about getting to that conclusion. Just like a teen boy!

Emily: He didn’t even get to that conclusion! His teacher had to tell him! And then Del was like "wait what? Oh yeah I do want to dance with her.” All of this is to say teenage boys are dumb.

Mary: He realized at prom she was actually cute. Just like a rom com.

Emily: But also toxic masculinity is kind of something boys have to be untaught, because of the messages they're receiving.

Mary: Definitely! And Del is fortunate to have a role model in the form of MJ, his teacher. But one teacher can only do so much, and the church is pushing an entirely different message. That’s not to say the church is pushing toxic masculinity here. We don’t see that per se, but based on my own church experience, I think it’s highly likely that the kids were getting instructed on how girls’ virginity is a precious treasure and men should protect them—all bad gender stereotypes and tropes we don’t need.

Emily: And you know, his Dad is an ADULT and hasn't unlearned toxic masculinity.

Mary: Exactly! His dad has work to do, too.

Emily: It isn't until his own daughter is a victim of it that he stops and realizes, "Wait I need to rethink how I treat women and what I'm teaching my son.” And it's sad that it takes that. I guess this would be a good transition into Cressie and the teen pregnancy stuff. The Baby-Getters Club.

Mary: Yes, yes—so Cressida, Del’s sister, has a YouTube channel where she talks about the Baby-Getters Club, a group of girls who happened to get pregnant around the same time and are rumored to have a pregnancy pact. Which, is total BS. This whole plot really highlighted for me something that I already knew; girls who have babies as teens are marked forever and made to feel ashamed of themselves. And the guys just get to walk away.

Emily: And I loved how these videos/social media gave the girls an opportunity to mark these dudes. It's small, but it's something. These girls are basically walking around school with these scarlet letters and the boys are totally fine.

Mary: It felt really empowering, to be honest. It felt like a small amount of justice for these girls. And a lot of them, didn’t even want anything from these guys. Del’s friend Shianne didn’t want financial support or help, but she didn’t want to be the only one made to feel bad about it.

Emily: Shianne was really cool. I hate that there was one girl in this book called Shanice and one called Shianne because the names were too similar and I kept getting confused. But phew this book is doing so much.

Mary: You’re right that this book is doing so much, and it’s all interwoven so tightly it’s hard to sort it out. Should we talk about the church?

Emily: I don’t have a lot of experience in church, so you go first.

Mary: So, I grew up going to church every Sunday, and while we didn’t have an eight week class about purity or whatever, we did have a true love waits program, or something like that. I definitely participate in, and made a promise, however as I became older my feelings grew to be more complex about the entire scenario.I think that putting this immense pressure on teenagers to view their bodies as dangerous or threatening, only serves to hurt them. And I think this book is making that point while also saying that a young person can choose to not have sex, for whatever reason feels right to them, and still learn about their bodies and see how they work.

So, the church in this book doesn’t venture into the really harmful talk that I have heard, and the notion of purity remains sort of vague. But for anyone who’s ever been to church, it’s pretty clear what they’re referencing and we can fill in the blanks. I think that overall the book isn’t trying to vilify religion, but it is trying to advocate for sex education which is good for everyone.

Emily: Yes, and I think it's saying that whether you decide to have sex or decide to wait, it's not really anyone's decision (or anyone's business) but your own. Neither is inherently wrong, but I think it’s wrong to feel pressured either way. And I think Del feels pressured to have sex so it goes both ways for sure.

Mary: Exactly! The book has a pretty nuanced view on all of it, which really impressed me. That seems hard to pull off. The more damning aspects of the church was that the kids were expected to testify in front of everyone—and were told what to say by their bigot pastor. At least he seemed pretty bigoted to me.

Emily: Yes I was really concerned with how the author was going to deal with religion at the start. And I think he does a good job of showing the issues with church and also the fact that every church is different. One of the issues, I think, that Lamar Giles is highlighting is the dangers of giving one person in the church so much power and blindly following that person. When you listen and invite new ideas in a church setting, church doesn't have to be a bad place.

Mary: Definitely—the pastor had too much power, but even by the end that was getting resolved. I liked how the book didn’t portray any one way as correct or right, and didn’t shame anyone really.

Emily: Except for Jameer’s parents, who took away all of his rights (like his Internet and his BEDROOM DOOR) when they found out he was gay. They were wrong. They should be shamed.

Mary: Yes, they are homophobic and awful!

At one point late in the book, Del finds out Kiera had sex with someone, and Del gets pissed because she didn’t want to have sex with him. The book doesn’t make it seem like Kiera is in the wrong, but that Del’s feelings of possessiveness are wrong. And that is really mature, I think. I’m happy for all the young people who will get to read this book and ave it’s influence.

Emily: Right, Kiera doesn't OWE anything to Del.

Mary: And he’s not entitled to anything from her.

Emily: This book covers that “nice guy” trope well, and Lamar Giles discusses this more in his article about toxic masculinity for Epic Reads.

Mary: Yessss. Del thinks he’s a nice guy.

Emily: Just because you're friendly doesn't mean a girl owes you anything. And just because you're acting friendly it doesn't mean you're a nice guy.

Mary: His sister schools him!

Emily: And Shianne does as well! She’s like, “Who ever said you were nice?” If you're acting friendly because you want something, then you're not nice, DEL!

Mary: Yeah, DEL!

Emily: This book was also really funny, I thought.

Mary: It was, it was. The dialogue felt believable to me, and it had light moments.

Emily: While still feeling serious when it needed to. And very real.

Mary: Ugh I just loved it so much.

Emily: Me too! I gave it 5 stars on Goodreads.

Mary and Emily’s feelings about this book? TWO LIZ LEMON THUMBS UP!

Mary: I also gave it five stars!! I just want everyone to read it.

Emily: This one was really special. Loved it.

So next up for YA Book Club is I Hope You Get This Message by Farah Naz Rishi. We’ve done a couple of realistic YA novels recently, so we want to dive back into something a little more… sci-fi. In this novel, Earth has been contacted by a planet named Alma, and apparently word on the street is that Earth only has seven days left. So… what would you do if you only had seven days left to live? We follow Jesse, Cate, and Adeem as they try to live out their last days on Earth! Dun dun dunnnn! I think this one should be really fun.

Mary: Yes!

Emily: Thanks so much for joining us for YA Book Club this month, and catch you at the end of March for our next book!