The Many Half Lived Lives Of Sam Sylvester Review By Mel #LGTBQBookClub(TWS Mentioned In Post)

The following post may contain mentions of Transphobia, Ableism and the solving of a murder. This review will remain spoiler free but they might come up. At the end of the book review I will be releasing a full list of triggers to look out for if you are interested in reading the book.

Reading level for this book: YA

Introduction

Hello everyone and welcome back to #LGTBQBookClub. From the 13th to the 24th August I read The Many Half Lived Lives Of Sam Sylvester by Maya MacGregor. The book contains Nonbinary and Autistic rep written by an Autistic Agender person, so I expected good Autism rep alongside the queer rep and that's what we got. As a Nonbinary Ace Autistic person this is the second book I picked up when looking for queer stories and I now believe that it wasn't a coincide. I needed this book and Young Mel would have loved it. For this book review we will be discussing what it's about, what I liked about the book, what I disliked about the book, what I thought about the rep in the book and if I thought the characters were written well and not stereotypical. I'll also as usual share a standout quote before then giving my overall thoughts and rating. I'll talk about the authors talk I went to in another post if people are interested.

All thoughts will be entirely spoiler free and I expect the comments below to be the same.

What The Book Is About

Eighteen year old, Sam Sylvester is nervous about the move to the town of Astoria, after a traumatic experience in their previous home town Oregon.

Things seem to get better with a new group of friends and a potential love interest in Shep but things begin to get spooky as Sam, along with Shep begin to investigate the mysterious death of a popular boy in the 1980's Astoria.

Will Sam be able to stop themself from having a half lived life, like the many they have studied?

What I Liked About The Book

Alot of may dislike this but I liked the fact that the main focus was on Sam recovering from their truama and finding a found family of queer and well one as we know straight friend. We also get into Sam's understandble fear of not living to be nineteen and how they overcome it. In the words of Maya "it's nice to have a happy queer story for once." Although a queer murder mystery is fun, I do believe in my heart that queer characters deserve happiness and although Sam goes through truamatic stuff in this book, they get to heal and that's great. The truama and fluff is balanced out really well.

That being said I did love the murder mystery. The twist so well hidden that I didn't even realise to the near end of the book. I won't say who the killer is but they reminded me of a more evil version of Adrian Toomes from Spider-Man Homecoming, you won't see it coming till its too late. It was also just really satisfying and the stakes built up well the more Sam was able to dig deeper into the mystery. It may not have hooked others but it definitely hooked me.

I love all of Sam's dynamics and relationships with every single character in the book. The dynamic with their friends was amazing but I want to talk about the dynamic with their Dad, Junius. Junius really brought out my own Daddy issues man. He is so kind and patient with Sam. It's so nice and refreshing to see a healthy relationship media between a parent and an Autistic child, oh and a queer child too. We need this representation more as often in queer media the Parent is not accepting or there's drama about the characters identity and its so refreshing to a see a ive parent that just let's their child. He also adopted Sam regardless of them being Autistic and deeply advocates from them when they might be in danger.

It's not entirely healthy on Sam's side as they keep stuff from him but it's still a great one. I won't spoil but there's a particular moment that had me in tears because it really did show how much Junius understood Sam.

What I Disliked About The Book

I had no major dislikes but just again like Loveless I felt like that some of the characters were a little bit underdeveloped. Sky was one character who had a very interesting storyline/subplot but I felt like it wasn't explored enough. Outing and Biphobia are very important topics to address but I understand that this was Sam's story and it didn't bother me too much but Maya has expressed they might right a short story with Adian so who knows but im not Bi so i would like to know if any Bi person that has read the book and how they felt about Sky's storyline.

Sky's storyline not being fleshed out was only a minor nit pick. Apart from that there's truly nothing that spoiled my enjoyment of the book.

Thoughts About Characters And Rep In The Book

Let's start with the major characters first and then we'll address the minor ones.

Sam Sylvester- First up we have the character of Sam Sylvester. Sam is canonically confirmed to be Nonbinary Queer And Asexual. I personally think it's nice to have their attraction unlabelled as personally I feel like if Sam was so many things at once MacGregor would personally be trying to check off rep like tik box's. I also think that in a world where forcing people to label themselves it's nice for once we don't wether Sam's, Bi, Pan or whatever. They just love Shep and that's cool.

The Ace rep was very good and I think educational as too many people think Autism and Asexuality coexist as if Autistic people can't experience sexual attraction like everyone else. It's a super uncomfortable moment in the book but a moment that allows Sam to be affirming of their identity. There's a hint they could be Demiromantic as well but that's coded. So I'm not taking it as fact since there's no canonical confirmation. I also find it great that through Sam being able to have a relationship it dispells the myths that all Asexual people don't have relationships. Seriously the Ace rep made me very happy.

Before I talk about the Autism representation, I want to talk about Sam's Nonbinary identity. I'm Nonbinary and the rep made me super emotional. Its so nice to have a piece of media where a Nonbinary person just exists it isn't a big deal, there isn't constant arguments about Sam's pronouns, they just exist and that's great. I think the reason why I went well because it was partially own voices as Agender is under The Nonbinary Umbrella. Maya wrote it delicately and made sure that ignoring all the murder mystery stuff, Sam's new classmates would not mistreat them. I really saw myself in Sam and how they feel about being Nonbinary.

Finally I'll talk about the Autism representation. This is some of the best Autism representation I have ever read or spotted in media and I'm so glad I found it when I needed it most (post diagnosis). Sam is honest about who they are and unapologetically them. The representation showed Autism for what it truly is neutral. Sam had their good and bad moments and the characters acknowledge it appropriately. There's a moment apart from the one with Junius where Shep gives Sam a fidget cube and its described how Sam feels fidgeting. I really wish I had a model like Sam growing up as it would have shown me "my odd" behaviours are ok. It is of my most deepest desires that most Autistic Trans kids get to read this. As some sometimes because of how disgusting society is Autistic people aren't taken seriously when they come out as Trans or any other identity. It's just nice to have intersectional representation.

Overall very happy with how Sam was written as a main character.

Junius Sylvesters- Junius, Junius, Junius, Junius. He is the Dad that everyone wants and is canonically Aro-Ace. It was only briefly mentioned in the book but overall I hope Junius means a lot to the Aro-Ace people that are told they will never be parents without a partner. There are so many harmful stereotypes out there about Aro-Ace people that for once it's nice to see a single parent, thriving and good at what he does.

It is so important to show different families in literature not just same sex couple families but single parents too. As there's still pressure from the media to be with a partner. Junius breaks heteronormativity and that's great. He still has struggles with Sam but he isn't villanised for it. Because of how nice he is to all the kids not just Sam, you really come to care for him and don't want anything to happen to him.

I really hope we get more characters like Junius in the future too.

Shep- Shep is a Bisexual queen. You immediately can tell her chemistry with Sam from the very beginning of the book. Her personality is so well written and she is far from a boring love interest, she's bubbly but also has a strong sense of justice.

She's protective of her friends and will happily call you out if she thinks your acting inappropriately. One review said her relationship with Sam felt forced but I completely disagree because I felt like it was built up so slowly and beautifully. Spoilers but I'm also glad there was no bury your gays or a dramatic break up, she and Sam were allowed to be together. She stands out from the moment she's introduced.

I'll touch on it more when talking about Sky but Maya is Bi and Demi and I can really tell that they didn't want these characters to fall into any stereotypes.

Again I know people might be uncomfortable with white people writing characters of colour but I feel like Shep being latina was handled very well. They were more than just the bipoc love interest, Shep like Sam had their own reasons for looking into Billy's death and wanting justice for him. Infact it's Shep that is the one investigating even before Sam came along.

Sheps great infact I think I loved her even more than Pip from Loveless.

Sky- Sky has a really good character arc and is super relatable. Similar to Nick Nelson from Heartstopper he fights to make his bisexuality visible and also is extremely tired of all the biphobia. Sky and Shep are really bi solidarity twins. Over the book we see Shep standing up to the people bullying Sky for breaking up with a girl and liking guys but eventually Sam and Aidan help him has well.

Although I don't feel like the arc was wrapped up well its so important to show the struggles of being Bi or a sexuality label that's not known. He's also very friendly to Sam and again a friend I wish I had back in High School. Could be better but I'm very satisfied with how he was written.

Aidan- I love him, the token straight of the group. As far as I know in the book, Aidan identities as straight but I just love the hopeful aspect of his character. It shows that there are accepting people out there that just wants friends. You expect him to be the school bully but he's the complete opposite. He at first quietly ires Sam's new friend group before fully ing up.

There's one specific moment where Sky is refusing to dance with boys at the school dance and although Sky ends up a bit upset because of the rumours that will start, I still think it was a nice thing to do. Although some allyship can be misguided Aidan stood up to toxic bullies and it felt so good. I don't want to spoil the full moment but it really shows his character development, which is great.

Overall, Maya did so well with these characters that I wanted more but I understand that they want to keep this standalone.

Standout Quote

There were alot of standout quotes I immediately typed into my reading journal but the one that hit hard the most had to be this one.

"I'm so much more than this b****. I'm more than their asinine fears and stereotypes or whatever the hell they think about people like us, Shep."

Without spoilers this is the moment where Sam finally has the courage to open up about Montana to Shep and it hit just so hard personally for me. With all the trans panic in the media right now and the hate towards LGTBQ+ individuals rising it's so true. After finally coming with identity all I can feel is angry and tired over the images bigots want to project on me when they don't even know me. I have a feeling I'm not the only one who feels this way. Maya really wants to hit us hard. There's so many quotes I wanted to highlight but I felt like this was the most important one. I just want to warn people that this book will absolutely crush you in the feels its beautiful.

Overall Thoughts And Rating

Overall a shocking twisted murder mystery mixed with a heartwarming tale about queer found family and moving on from the past. It was just absolutely fabulous with such amazing autistic rep I wish I had, had as a child. This is definitely a book I would recommend to other people. Absolutely I would rate it five stars, it's a must read. I'm so excited to read more of what Maya MacGregor writes. I had the pleasure of reading an arc copy of Maya's next book, The Evolving Truth Of Ever-Stronger Will and it was amazing. This is definitely a queer author to keep any eye on.

Conclusion

Hope you've enjoyed reading another bookclub post. I'm actually excited as I'm starting a real life Lgtbq+ Bookclub at my college. As I said if you would be interested in reading a follow up post talking about the authors talk I went to with the author please comment below, I'm already thinking about it in order to break up the book reviews. Next Bookclub post will be about When Our Worlds Collided By Danielle Jawando, once I have read it. Thanks for reading.

-Melody-

They/Them

Sam Sylvester Trigger Warnings If Your Intrested In Reading The Book.