Book Talk Review; Fem

Fem is one book in a long line of books written by Seth King that left me speechless.

Peter Martin is living two lives inside one body. 

Although he is openly gay, a lifetime of taunting from his family and community for being “too feminine” has still left him clad in false armor, portraying a character that is entirely fake, but keeps him safe from ridicule all the same. Stand tall, speak deeply, keep a strong handshake, never draw attention, never be “too gay.”But deep in his wildest dreams, Peter is a fabulous, flamboyant diva – he is just terrified of what it would mean for his life if he ever let his true rainbow colors shine through. 

Until he meets Andre Munoz. 

Andre is a traditionally masculine gay man who happens to love men like Peter, and who treasures Peter for everything he ever hated and concealed about himself. Andre is also into the “lace lifestyle,” a mysterious underground world of men who reject society’s rules and engage in sex while wearing gender-bending looks involving lingerie, fishnets, heels, and more. Peter is instantly hooked – on Andre, and on the lingerie. 

Peter and Andre soon fall electrically in love, and their increasingly mind-blowing – and boundary-pushing – sex sessions come with an unexpected side effect. For the first time, Peter is embracing, exploring, and even accepting his own femininity. Glowing with all this newfound confidence, Peter soon gets a wild idea: after years of being half-alive, why not finally unleash his truest self and launch the side career of his dreams as a drag queen? 

But Peter’s family is still his family, and his town is still his town. Will Andre prove to be his ultimate savior, or the catalyst of the biggest mistake of his life? 

Seth King’s Fem is a love story about how in the end, the love that rules all is the love you must find for the man in the mirror – even if that man happens to be wearing sequins.

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Fem is the story of Peter and his fight to find himself. It’s about discrimination within the LGBTQ community, it’s a story about learning to love yourself for who you are and not who you think you need to be. It’s a book I needed to read without knowing it.

What I love best about Seth King books is that there’s always a thread in them that I can follow and connect to and live through. I couldn’t do that with this book because I know I will never feel what Peter felt. And coming to the realization that this is a real thing people go through, it hurt. I wasn’t able to empathize, but by the end of the book, I could sympathize. I could understand the need for acceptance and just wanting to be love. I might not be able to connect to him like I usually do, but I felt a kinship with him in that we both just wanted to be loved.

There’s a love story in this book. One I was wary about because Andre seemed just too perfect at times. I was scared it would end horribly (this is a Seth King book after all), but I was glad that Peter had Andre. What they explored together was more than just lace and dressing the way you want to. But they explored what it meant to be loved for being yourself, no matter who that is.

This book is powerful and I had more than one “wow” moment as I realized that this is real life and it’s hard to read about. But it also hardens my resolve into getting more involved. Getting more people to read this, getting more people to realize how hard life can be for some because of the limited views society has on what a person should be.

I felt like I did while I was reading Straight. I felt myself being opened up to a whole new world and it was both beautiful and heartbreaking. Beautiful because I saw more than I ever thought possible. I saw all the good there was. But I also saw what the damage was. For guys like Peter life is so very cruel and it broke me.

The journey Peter takes is not an easy one and I cried for him. I cried for him because we get to see, not only how society treats him, but how he treats himself. While I couldn’t connect with everything Peter went through, I did feel when he saw a therapist and God, I cried like a baby. Because that was just everything. Everything with his mother was killer, but also perfect because getting the how and the why like that made his evolution that much more powerful.

Peter broke my heart and Pixie put it back together again. Seeing Peter learn and grow and become the person he always was inside was beautiful. It was moving. It was breathtaking, it was what I spent the entire book waiting for.

Seth King is writing books that we need. He’s writing books that speak out, books that matter.

*Quote-

“All I want is to matter to someone, and have them matter to me.”

“To embrace the things that scare you the most, to run for the things you hate instead of hiding them...it’s kind of the most freeing thing anyone could ever do. It’s more than sex. It’s...freedom.”

“Everyone deserves this, at least once in their life—to be touched by someone who seems like they can’t even believe they’re actually touching you, like your skin itself is a winning lottery ticket.”

“Maybe the person we know least of all is the one in the mirror.”