Fem by Seth King

288 pages

Buy links: Amazon US | Amazon UK

Also available to read in Kindle Unlimited

Blurb

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? 

Review

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

As far as the story line in this stunning book is concerned, I can’t add a whole lot to the blurb, which describes Peter’s journey perfectly.

I do, however, have a few things I want to say about the story, because to me it was far more than the sum of the parts as described above.

As I said in the first line of my review, this is a stunning book, and I mean that both in a lyrical and in the literal sense of the word. On more than one occasion while reading this story I was literally stunned. Sometimes it was the quality of an insight, sometimes the way something had been phrased, and at other times it was the strength of the emotions Peter’s story brought up in me.

While Fem most definitely is a romantic novel, to me the romance almost took second place to everything else that was happening with and to Peter. For me the main story was Peter’s journey of discovery, his awakening, his finding of himself.

And it is a glorious, although not always straightforward, journey. Peter has a lot of past hurt to overcome. The world he grew up him has taught him his true self isn’t good ‘manly’ enough, so he hides who he really is and ‘mans up’ (God, I hate that term), because he’s learned at an early age that:

“So this doesn’t have to do with how I look. It has to do with me personally. Not how I look. How I am.”

Enter Andre who, unlike men Peter has previously met, likes Peter exactly as he is. Andre who, in fact, can’t wait to help Peter discover everything he’s fled from in the past. What follows is almost a re-birth as Peter slowly allows himself to be true to himself, first in the privacy of his own house and later, very slowly, also when he’s out and about.

There are no miracle revelations in this story, thankfully. The beauty of this book lies in the slow but unstoppable progress Peter makes. With Peter the reader moves from past pain and fears through cautious hope to a full and glorious belief in all that he is and, most importantly, that he’s not just good enough but magnificent.

Before you think this is a book filled with ‘just’ soul-searching, allow me to reassure you. Whereas Peter’s development is the core of this touching tale, there are numerous moments of light and humorous relief, not in a small part thanks to a cast of wonderful secondary characters such as Pixie (they/them). And Peter’s mommy is a wonderful example of characters being anything but one dimensional.

I’m not sure my review is doing this book and all the emotions I experienced while reading it, justice. Suffice to say this was a touching, thought-provoking, and ultimately heart-warming story that will stay with me because it was very well told and felt incredibly personal to the author, as if I had been given the key to his heart. Thank you Seth King.

“That’s what the best books do: they heal things in you that you didn’t even know were broken.”