Two best friends. A shared birthday. Six years…ERIC: There was the day we were born. There was the minute Morgan and I decided we were best friends for life. The years where we stuck by each other’s side–as Morgan’s mom died, as he moved across town, as I joined the football team, as my parents started fighting. But sometimes I worry that Morgan and I won’t be best friends forever. That … friends forever. That there’ll be a day, a minute, a second, where it all falls apart and there’s no turning back the clock.
MORGAN: I know that every birthday should feel like a new beginning, but I’m trapped in this mixed-up body, in this wrong life, in Nowheresville, Tennessee, on repeat. With a dad who cares about his football team more than me, a mom I miss more than anything, and a best friend who can never know my biggest secret. Maybe one day I’ll be ready to become the person I am inside. To become her. To tell the world. To tell Eric. But when?
Six years of birthdays reveal Eric and Morgan’s destiny as they come together, drift apart, fall in love, and discover who they’re meant to be–and if they’re meant to be together. From the award-winning author of If I Was Your Girl, Meredith Russo, comes a heart-wrenching and universal story of identity, first love, and fate.
“Beautifully written, Birthday is an altogether singular contribution to the gradually growing body of transgender literature and, indeed, to mainstream literature, as well.” —ALA Booklist, starred review
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Read this wonderful book. Just read it.
This is the story of two teens and a relationship, shown in snippets year by year, as they grow from 13 to 18, from scared and uncertain to confident.
Morgan is a trans girl, but that’s not easy for her to either accept about herself, or present to the world. At 13, she tries to tell her best friend Eric, on their mutual birthday, in a rush of self-understanding and hope. But circumstances mean he doesn’t hear her brave declaration, and finding the moment and the courage to get past that brink again is going to take years, and pain, and changes for them both.
Although the structure of one brief period a year means that a few important moments didn’t make it onto the page, I was impressed with how well this book helped me see and imagine Morgan’s life through the years, as she tried to live with, or suppress, or change, or accept, her identity. And Eric’s confusion knowing something was going on with his best friend, and between them, but not having the key to decipher exactly what.
Both these teens felt believable, the lack of communication realistic, and Morgan’s steps forward and back, amid the pressures in her life, were achingly real. The ending is perhaps a bit sunny, but I was glad to find a warm, sweet resting place at the end of the story for both main characters.
In Birthday we meet Morgan and Eric. Morgan was born a boy but feels trapped in his body. Morgan feels like a girl born with a boys body. Eric was born a boy. Eric is attracted to girls. Both boys were born on the same day. They celebrate every birthday together.
With each birthday comes the realization that Morgan’s body is changing from boy to man. He’s running out of time to stop the changes. He knows without a doubt that he no longer wants to be a boy and that he was meant to be a girl.
Morgan and Eric live in a sleepy little mountain town. This town is nowhere ready to accept his transgender identity crisis. Football is the beating heart of this town which is why Morgan and Eric grew up playing it. Over the years he’s felt like he’s going through the motions living a lie he no longer wants to live with.
Morgan’s dad coaches football. His dad lost his wife to cancer. He’s doing the best he can as a single dad. Morgan’s afraid telling him he no longer wants to be a boy will send him spiraling into another depression. Losing his wife crushed him. Losing his son to a daughter might not be received as well as he hopes.
I met one person in my life who was born a girl but felt like being a boy was her destiny. With the help of her parents she transformed her body into a boys taking testosterone pills to help the process. It was a confusing time for everyone involved. I got to hear how this change affected the parents and friends who had known and watched a girl grow up. Reading this story is like being inside the private moments. I wanted into those private moments to better understand how a persons body feels differently from what it shows to the rest of the world.
It’s sad reading how Morgan expresses his body as “this body” as if it doesn’t belong to him. He’s like a host living as a girl within a boys body. Like The Swap when actors swap places and the girl becomes a boy and vice versa.
For the most part I liked this story. It was overkill on the football stuff. I get that this town thrives from football, but it’s boring. Sadly, I’m skim reading through those scenes. I’m mostly interested in Morgan’s perspective and experiences. It’s extremely informative.
From the age of fourteen up to the age of eighteen Morgan and Eric battle with there changing bodies.
I expected something different. My preconceived ideas concocted a different path. I appreciate the idea of sharing Morgan’s thoughts and feelings. I was needing something more profound not something revolving around football.
On Morgan & Eric’s 13th birthday, Morgan wants to tell his best friend, Eric, he wants to be a girl. Morgan doesn’t tell, in fact he tells no one. Morgan and Eric are trying to navigate freshman year of high school and they’re demanding father’s. I like the main characters but the fathers are just guys you wish you could beat. I never realized how it all was for a teen, this book has opened my eyes and i’m glad for that. Maybe some day things will get easier. This is such a good book.
Morgan and Eric share the same birthday and are best of friends. “Birthday” starts on their 12th birthday and takes you through their 18th birthday. Meredith Russo takes you on a ride through the story as the narrative is told in alternating chapters of Morgan and Eric along with only focusing on the birthday date of each year. I liked the unique set up of the book. As all friendships go, Meredith Russo showcased friendship that ebbs and flows over the years as they each learn more about themselves and how to navigate their worlds.
Ugh, this book tears your heart to shreds and puts it back together again. Simply stunning.
One of my new favorite stories. Love the format, love the characters. Dual POV, transgender, lots of character development.
Only after a few chapters I already felt heartbroken and sad that 2 best friends can be so close and intuitively “knowing, but yet so isolated and afraid from each other. It was just so sad how far they both went in order to do what was expected of them, what was “normal”. How they both “knew” better of it, but couldn’t or didn’t dare act like because of repercussions or disappointing the few people they thought care(d) about them. Especially the birthday letters were a punch to the gut.
I could’t put this book away, I needed to know how it ended. So I finished it in one go with bloodshot and teary eyes in the early morning hours.
such a sweet and emotional book. I really enjoyed this one. It was very emotional and eye opening. A teenage boy doesn’t really feel like a boy and wonders if it’s something that will pass and when it doesn’t he doesn’t know how he will get the people he cares about the most to accept him and love him for who he is. I read this one in one sitting and couldn’t put it down. It’s about two boys discovering who they really are and how they really feel about one another.
The reading of the book was not even close to the point of drawing the listener into the book. I keep trying, but I am finding it more and more difficult to stay interested. All the different characters of the book seem to sound like each other.
Birthday is a luminous and profoundly moving coming-of-age story of love, family, friendship, destiny, and the struggle to live as one’s truest self. It will break your heart, piece it back together even stronger, and do it again and again until the last page.
Will change minds and open hearts.
Where do I even begin? I saw mention of this book somewhere (GoodReads? Buzzfeed Books?) and was intrigued by the cover and blurb, so I knew I had to read it- ASAP. Naturally impatient, I found that Flatiron Books was providing ARCs to some readers and was lucky enough to get my greedy hands on one. From there, I tumbled in head-first.
Prior to this book, I was in a bit of a reading slump. By the fourth chapter of sorts (it goes back and forth between the two main characters), I was hooked and absolutely couldn’t put it down. The complex emotions of dealing with living in a small town, being unable to express or experience true self, and being a teenager are universal; however, Morgan’s feelings and reality are felt more acutely.
These two main characters were really something. Proving yourself, living up to parental and societal expectations, loss of a parent, unconditional love, gender expression, and so many other elements were covered with care in this YA book. Truth be told, I am verklempt after flying through the pages. I’m left lying on my bed writing this review and thinking, “Now what?”
The story was beautiful, so skillfully and intentionally told. My experience is far removed from that of a teen living in a small middle of nowhere town in Tennessee, but Russo transplanted me to that place and time. I devoured every word, every page, and I’m left deeply moved.
Relatable and important, this book has the potential to make the world a better place. How? By effortlessly allowing the reader to live in Morgan’s shoes for 18 years, how could they possibly allow or support the (currently legal) discrimination, hateful policies, and ignorance that exist?
Five shining stars. I want to hug the author (and characters).
I scored an ARC of Meredith Russo’s next release, BIRTHDAY. I loved her debut IF I WAS YOUR GIRL, so I knew this one would be good. BIRTHDAY isn’t just “good,” though. Russo blew me away (and made me sob more than twice).
Russo goes to bat, exposing all of the subtle and blatant ways that people hurt transgender people, while crafting a beautiful love story between Morgan and Eric that smooths away all those jagged edges. My heart hurt so much for Morgan at times, I couldn’t bear it. But there were also moments that lifted me up, and the ending itself wrapped me in a warm hug that I still feel.
Russo brought her A game, and then some. I can’t wait to see what she does next.
Cross-posted from https://elizabethbaronebooks.com/book-recs-to-wreck-you-january-2019/