The One True Me and You
by Remi K. England
4 Stars
Teagan is a beauty queen competing in the Miss Cosmic Teen beauty pageant. She has a good chance to get to the top five and maybe even win the competition, she really needs the scholarship money so she can go to school for Art Therapy as debt free as possible. But Teagan has a few secrets that could ruin her chances, not only is she obsessed with fandoms, often drawing her own pairings of queer characters, but she's also a lesbian and there has never been an out contestant in a Miss Cosmic Teen beauty pageant. A chance meeting with Kay who is attending GreatCon might push her into the spotlight for all the wrong reasons. Kay is an aspiring author and popular fanfic writer. Kay is using this con to try out they/them pronouns as well as exploring their sexuality by hopefully kissing a girl for the first time. But the two have someone in common, a mean spirited girl who is Miss. North Carolina who bullies Kay at school and will do anything to beat Teagan out of competition.
Kay is a sweet character who is exploring their non-binary identity. They are from a small town where they can't really be themselves without it being as issue. They are surrounded by a small tight knit group of friends who are relatively diverse, although no one is really described in too much detail. They are all some sort of Queer and have various hobbies within the fandom.
Teagan has a heart of gold and is genuinely a nice person. She is painted as more real and down to earth and not a typical pageant girl. She also has a few close friends but seems to be the only openly Queer individual. (minor spoiler: at first) She spends her free time helping others and doing what she can to better the community.
Both are decently written characters but could have used a little more depth. I had a few issues with the writing style, but the story overall was good. It did seem however to be written quite a while ago and only just published without much updating and also written for a much older audience. I wonder if it was written as Adult characters but was tweaked to be "teen" characters instead. Because for 17/18 both are very mature and beyond a lot of the childish antics YA books normally have. My biggest issue was the fact that despite the characters admittance to want to be called Kay and use they/them pronouns the title headings used Kaylee even though they are referred to correctly in the text of the story. Also no one brings a 3Ds to a con in 2022, it could have been simply updated to a more modern piece of technology, especially when the outdated song references were "explained away" as we know it's old we like it anyway. Overall a well written and sweet Queer YA romance, I would recommend this to anyone who wants a quick read with a little bit of calming fluff.