I was born in 1996, so I was lucky enough to be a kid during the Harry Potter craze — Deathly Hallows came out in July 2007, just months before I turned 11. The summer of ’07 was also, incidentally, the summer Stephenie Meyers’ Eclipse released; right smack in the middle of YA’s expansion, a subset of publishing that has only ballooned ever outward over the past decade-plus. Yet for all of the enthusiasm, for all of the hundreds of titles published — I didn’t get my hands on a single book with a queer protagonist until I was 12, when I stumbled on a copy of Hero by Perry Moore at the library.
What makes a good book group book choice? The answer isn’t intuitive. Far from searching for a book everyone will love, you should choose a book some people will almost assuredly hate.
