Birthday

Two best friends fall in love despite the changes in their lives and social pressures that threaten to tear them apart.
They were inseparable childhood friends, transgender girl Morgan and cisgender boy, Eric. They spend every birthday together. It was a rare September snowstorm that brought their families together in the hospital on the day that they share...the day of their birth. As they grow up and go through the difficulties that are often faced, such as high school; Morgan struggles to understand and like, much less love, herself.

Mogan feels trapped. Her mother has died of cancer, and she is afraid that she'll be rejected by her best friend, Eric and her father, the football coach, if she dares to tell them her "secret"...the show more secret she has kept since she was 5-years old...She's NOT a girl...She's a boy. Eric also has family tension and worries. He worries about his friendship with Morgan, as well as hiding his own concerns about his sexuality and his future. He identifies as "cisgender". Being cisgender isn’t the same thing as being "straight", but the two sexualities can overlap. People can be both "cisgender" and "straight". If this is confusing to you...think how confusing it is to an 8-year-old.

The narrative follows Morgan and Eric from year to year on their birthday. The author captures every last ounce of the intense feelings of these two young people who feel trapped in their small, football-obsessed town. Morgan’s self-acceptance is an intimate, honest journey with a hopeful resolution that acknowledges the struggles and experiences of transgender people. While the story ends on a happy note, grief, economic struggle, abuse, discrimination, suicide, and divorce all play significant roles in the story and how they affected the development of the two main characters.

It's not a very long book but it is packed to the gills with so many emotions...emotions that most people may not understand...but hopefully they will at least try. The slow-burn romance between Eric and Morgan is so worth the wait.

Side note: I volunteer and work with a group of LGBTQ kids from ages 7-17. Two of them are transgender...so I have heard about and seen some of the difficulties they have already encountered. With this story, the author sends two messages...that the world is slowly changing...and that no one has been given the "God-given" right to stand in judgement of anyone else. show less

Trigger Warnings: Domestic Abuse, Suicide, Homophobia, Transphobia

Birthday follows two kids, Morgan and Eric, who have been best friends since the day they were born (their parents both stuck in the hospital for 3 days due to a snow storm when they were born). Meeting with both kids, once a year on their birthday, from ages 13-18, many changes happen. With Eric, he tries to figure out who is and how he fits into the world. With Morgan, she makes the difficult choice on how best to be true to herself. Over the years, the duo go through the roller coaster that is teenage life, coming together, drifting apart and ultimately, realizing just how close they really are to each other.

I read this book in only two settings (only because I started show more it pretty late on the first night). It's a fast, yet beautifully heartbreaking read about acceptance, love, grief, and everything else that stands in the way of finding yourself as a teenager. Meredith Russo open a window and gave me a look inside a life I have little knowledge about: being transgender.

I connected with both characters very quickly and wanted them both to succeed and be happy. I also had tears in my eyes when Morgan talked about her many struggles and fears.

The only downside would be that I am not a fan of the cover at all. I had it on my TBR shelf for a year and a half before I finally read it. Every once in a while I would do a "clean out" and I would re-figure out what it was about because the cover didn't feel like it matched up. Once I read the story, I get it, but otherwise it just doesn't stick out for me.

This book gives a voice to so many who have been voiceless before. It's hard to put into words how much I really did love this book and how much these characters will stay with me for quite awhile. show less

3.5 - 4 star rating (unsure for now).

This was both heartbreaking and hopeful. It was incredibly hard to read the majority of this novel as a trans reader due to the amount of internalized transphobia & self hatred (so if you're a trans reader keep that in mind - this isn't just a fluffy romance with trans rep). I liked how it followed these two characters each year on their birthday as they grew up, it was such a cool concept and executed well, it was just so painful at times that I had to stop reading and distract myself. Meredith Russo writes internalized transphobia so damn [heartbreakingly] well. Despite the amount of pain in this novel it ends ultimately with a sense of great hope, it just took a lot of heartbreak to get show more there.

Trigger warning: transphobia, homophobia, homophobic slurs, death of a parent, self harm, suicide attempt, internalized transphobia, alcoholism, parental abuse show less

I have seriously got to stop reading dead parent books. I'm over here just bawling at Morgan's mom writing birthday letters for every birthday she'll miss. I know that is a secondary plot, but for me it became a fixation because I couldn't stop imagining how Morgan's life would've been different with her mom around. That last letter especially broke me.

I‘m not sure what to say about this book. It might be hitting a little bit to close to home, while also being completely different from my experience, making it impossible for me to try to objectively rate it in any way.
It‘s definitely a sad, but hopeful read. Due to the fact that the reader is only shown one day a year, the passing feels never slow, but it also doesn’t feel rushed. Pretty clever in my opinion.
I like the two main characters, but also some of the side characters, especially Jasmine, even though she didn’t appear too much.

A book that somehow tackles deep topics/feelings in the cutest and simplest of ways.

There was so much happening in this book that I think the device of only see one day out of the year for multiple years may have hindered it slightly.