Playing by the Book by S. Chris Shirley (review)

Jake’s dad, “The Preacher,” has finally relented, and Jake, prepping for a senior year as editor-in-chief of the high school newspaper in his tiny Alabama town, gets permission to attend a competitive summer institute for aspiring journalists in New York. If Jake doesn’t take home an award from the program, however, The Preacher will take it a sign from God that Jake’s meant to follow in his daddy’s footsteps and become a minister for his fundamentalist congregation. Complicating matters is Jake’s hot new suitemate Sam, who happens to be gay and unknowingly pushes on Jake’s “thorn in his side,” his attraction to other guys. After some intense prayer, Jake believes that he may have been “cured,” but a failed attempt to establish a relationship with a girl leads to a downward spiral of a desperate one-night stand, a paranoid HIV test, a very public outing, and suicidal ideation, until Jake’s finally able to assert himself against The Preacher and make a small inroad into reconciling his faith and his sexuality. There’s been some exploration of this topic before in LGBT YA, but the intensity of Jake’s internal debates will strike new chords with teens from similar backgrounds, and his growth from closed-minded and closeted to confident though still confused is genuine. Some long-windedness with the details of the journalism school protracts the story, though, and an over-attention to explaining Jake’s family’s “One Way” version of Christianity (and Sam’s Jewishness) awkwardly drags the pace. Still, given the slight number of books at the nexus of queerness and religion, this will be a useful follow-up for some to Sánchez’s The God Box (BCCB 1/08) and Hartzler’s Rapture Practice (BCCB 7/13).