Just Happy to Be Here

A transgender teen views a secret society as her path to acceptance in this earnest novel by Kanakia (We Are Totally Normal). Tara Rituveni, 15, is the first trans student at all-girls Ainsley Academy. Her Indian immigrant parents are hesitantly supportive but oppose hormone therapy, and worry that potential retaliation from Virginia’s increasingly anti-trans government could threaten their precarious immigration status. Tara hopes that if she’s chosen as one of two students to join the illustrious Sibyls—a society that offers hefty scholarship dollars financially backed by Ainsley’s most successful alumna, Evnangeline Beaumont—she’ll feel less out of place. Evangeline’s nephew Liam, a trans student at Ainsley’s all-boys counterpart school, warns Tara that his aunt is transphobic, and that seems to prove true when Tara’s eligibility for Sibyls is questioned. Older student Felicity, Tara’s new friend and crush, soon concocts a plan to sneak Tara into the society’s membership interviews, which has unexpected consequences. While the jam-packed plot can occasionally feel a bit woolly, Kanakia’s exploration of the spaces between social and medical transition is heartfelt and necessary, and Tara’s complex and realistically contradictory emotions around her experiences are effectively conveyed. Supporting characters read as white. Ages 14–up. (Jan.)