Fin & Rye & Fireflies happened and now I need a lie down

I’m going to start by saying this: June and July are stacked with new books I want to read, so there will be no shortage of stuff coming. It’s just a matter of when I can get through all the books I want to read. Still, the first one on that list is Fin & Rye & Fireflies by Harry Cook which, before I bought it, I didn’t actually realise had a little praise quote on the cover from Abdi Nazemian – which is pretty nifty, considering Nazemian’s book was the last one I read. (Also, do I know why this first paragraph has formatted itself differently to the others? No, and we're not going to question it :))

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So, to start, like every other post at this point, the blurb mentions that one minute, Fin is kissing Jesse, and the next he’s being outed. Then his parents do what they think is the right thing, which is move him to a new town. But apparently that didn’t stop him from being who he is, and if he won’t stop, they’ll force him down the straight and narrow with “conversion therapy”. Now, I’ve put those conversion therapy in air quotes because they’re in air quotes on the blurb. And from the old blurb-a-ronie, that’s seems like quite a lot. It was a lot to go on, especially when it says the parents think that Fin’s queerness is a “lifestyle”. So, we’ve got mess there already.

Now, this book is set in Australia… but I didn’t realise that until page 109, when one character says, “Here we are, in Australia”. You might wonder why I’m mentioning this. I’m mentioning it because Cook uses, what I thought was, the UK spellings and terms for things. Like he uses the word “bonnet” for the car part, instead of “hood”, and “mum” instead of “mom”, and that’s fine, no problems. My problem was that the book then mentioned dollars, and I was so confused for the longest time, and I thought the book was set in some fictional US place. Now, maybe I missed it, I will fully admit that I’m not the most observant reader, but I wish there had been something more obvious, and earlier in the book, that would have told me the book was set in Australia, because I spent the whole first 100 pages or so thinking that it felt weird seeing the UK spellings of things when I thought the book was set in the US. Again, this might have all been down to me not being very keen-eyed, and if that is in fact the case, feel free to disregard this whole point, but I feel like there could have been earlier clarification that we were in Australia.

That aside, Fin’s parents, even though I already sort of had an idea of the kinds of people they were, they gave me the same vibes as Ben de Backer’s parents from I Wish You All the Best by Mason Deaver. They gave me that ick. Fin’s dad, in the first chapter, makes Fin open the car door for his mum citing, “manners maketh the man.” And they’re also the types of people that are thinking that homosexuality is “unnatural behaviour”. Like I said, ick. Now, the tea is that they moved their family to this new town because they – “they” being the parents – were the type that believed sexuality was a choice and they needed to move to get Fin away from these “tendencies” he has so he can get on the straight and narrow. And spoiler alert, moving towns didn’t stop Fin from being gay.

Anyway, we meet Rye and Poppy at the same time, and immediately Poppy yells at someone for using a homophobic slur – which we love to see. And then Rye tells Fin he has a cute name – which we also love to see. And when he, Fin, hangs out with Rye and Poppy, he discovers Rye has a boyfriend that Poppy doesn’t really like.

But then as the story progresses, obviously Fin and Rye were going to be in love, because the whole book is based around them. But when it switched between POVs (which I’ll mention in the next paragraph briefly), there were little details that they both thought about, like metaphors that they made that were the same, and, God, it was sweet. Still, Fin’s dad ended up thinking that Poppy was Fin’s girlfriend, but he still sends Fin to what the blurb said, the “conversion therapy” was, which ended up being a church group, or meeting, where they taught men to be more “typically masculine” like how like they “used to be”. And now, I don’t want to give any spoilers, especially since the book only came out in 2020. But I will mention that after that instance of sending Fin to the church group, it gets more intense in kind of a “let me face the wall and scream” kind of way. Like, I didn’t know where the book was going to go, but when it went where it did go… It was a lot.

The book was also multiple POV – it followed both Fin and Rye. In Rye’s POV, we see that his boyfriend, Eric, kind of sucks, and he’s clearly just trying to use Rye for sex… And Rye was just so optimistic about someone being seemingly interested in him, and I hated that for him, because I’ve been there myself. Also, I told you I would mention it briefly.

Now, finally, I will say that it took me a little bit to get to that point where I was like, “Oh, I don’t want to stop reading this”, but I definitely got there in the second half of the book. Like, when I read, I’m not the quickest reader. I tend to get to like 60 pages read in one sitting and think that that’s a good stopping point. I did that for two nights, getting to 120 pages, and then on my third time picking up the book… I read the remaining 220 pages, only stopping because I had to go and eat. So, if that’s anything to go by, there’s your recommendation. And how I feel about this book.

It took a little bit to get going – I liken it to Regigigas in Pokemon. A slow start, but once that slow start is over it is a roaring tirade and a force to be reckoned with. So, as a clunky ending to this post, I really liked this book – go read it!

            Okay, bye!