Almost Perfect by Brian Katcher

What if everything you believed to be true about someone was a lie? Well, not EVERYTHING. Just one thing. But it’s the one thing that changes everything. High school senior and small town boy Logan Witherspoon has the rug pulled out from under him when smart, sexy, funny new girl Sage reveals after their first kiss that she is biologically a boy. Hurt, confused and angry, Logan at first wants nothing more to do with her. But he misses Sage’s laughter and easy banter more than he thought, and soon he can no longer deny his physical feelings for her. The thing is, Sage LOOKS like a girl, ACTS like a girl, SMELLS like a girl and for all intensive purposes IS a girl in every way except, well, THAT one. Logan has never met a transgendered person in his life and has no idea how to navigate this new relationship. Does his attraction to Sage mean that he’s gay? What if someone finds out about Sage? Is he prepared to stand up for her? How can he explain Sage to his family and friends, and does he even have to? All because of “one teeny, little, microscopic, enormous, universe-sized complication,” Logan’s world has been turned upside down, and instead of answers he just keeps finding more questions. The biggest question of all is if he knows how to be a true friend to someone when she needs him the most. Unfortunately, that’s the one question Logan is having the most trouble answering. This honest, funny, and often heartbreaking book openly addresses the prejudices and misconceptions often held about transgendered people and puts them out there for us to examine, understand and hopefully discard as nonsense and ignorance. What Logan painfully comes to understand is that you fall in love with a person, not a gender, and that if you let it, love will always find a way. Make sure to check out Katcher’s equally excellent first novel, Playing with Matches.)