Birthday (Review)

Who knew I needed a birthday buddy romance so badly in my life?

Morgan and Eric are the definition of OTP.

Eric and Morgan were born on the same day and have been best friends ever since. Birthday dips into their lives every birthday from 13-18 as Morgan come to terms with being transgender, Eric figures out where his life is taking him (and whether he’s ok with that direction) and they both deal with their feelings for each other that complicate their friendship.

This book handles a lot of difficult topics in a very short time. Topics of gender and sexuality, homophobia and transphobia, mental health and suicidal ideations, grief, loss of a parent, parental abuse, friendship, romantic relationships, substance abuse/alcoholism all in less than 300 pages. It’s a coming of age, a coming out, and a coming into one’s own story.

“Maybe that’s what life is about: surviving what you can’t control and clinging to the good things the winds whip up.”

All of this packed into this little bitty beautiful book ensures that there are no dull moments but also made the themes that were trying to come across quite blatant and obvious, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, especially for a YA audience. Sometimes, as an older reader, things felt a bit on-the-nose for my own tastes but I can’t exactly blame it for that. However, for some, this book may pack so much of a punch that it may be difficult to read, as there’s never much of a reprieve from the hard-hitting topics.

This story doesn’t need to be longer, but it could have been. I would have loved to spend more time with Eric and Morgan and see more of their good times together, rather than just what ended up being a majority of the difficult times. I would have really enjoyed seeing some everyday moments between them, and what their friendship was before everything happened, rather than just being told how it has changed. Part of this, however, is just because I adore these characters so much that I want to know more about them, but also because I felt it would have painted a more complete portrait of who they are (as individuals and together)

“I’m not a project.”

Although I loved the idea that we only see them on their birthdays and the way the story dips in and out of their lives on this certain day but it does require a bit of a suspension of disbelief to accept that all of this events just happen to fall on their birthday. We understand that other things happen every year that we don’t get to see, but considering what they’re both going through, there doesn’t seem to be that much that occurs between the chapters, which seems a bit unrealistic. 

That being said, these issues pale in comparison to the overall strengths of this story. Eric and Morgan are both well-developed characters that are easy to root for from the beginning and the story certainly works well to spread awareness and set-up dialogues about a host of issues, many of them tied to the experiences of Morgan as a trans teenager, a narrative which is so important to share especially from #ownvoices authors like Meredith Russo.

I rated Birthday 4.5 out of 5 stars. Fans of Something Like Gravity will probably like this, and perhaps even more so.