There Goes Sunday School is a bit of an angsty mess. The main character is so terrified that anyone will find out he’s gay and yet he carries around a sketchbook that has tons of sketches he’s done of men together with his name and phone number on the back. So of course when it goes missing, it sends him into a downward spiral, terrified he’ll be outed at any moment. Which essentially is Mike’s MO. he’s constantly terrified he’ll be outed and yet has no intention of coming out. His fear is real. Who wouldn’t be afraid to come out, especially when you live in a community that’s homophobic. As angsty as it is, I found that part relatable. However, his treatment of Chris when he came out was a bit over the top. It made me relieved for the end – which I would normally not have been since i’d been expecting a romance. This is a coming out tale. Not a romance. (HUGE SPOILER – by definition, romances end with the couple in an HFN or an HEA. This one ends with the couple dating other guys.)
I feel completely out of touch with the youth in this particular school. Jacqui smokes like a chimney and supposedly her mother doesn’t know. Seriously? She reeks of it constantly. Not to mention none of the parents seems to notice when their children come home stinking of weed. That’s not the type of smell that one can miss. Then you have girls going down on guys in the school bathrooms and none of the adults catch on. Seriously?
The homophobia as shown by the adults in Mike’s school feels right on. I like how the author points out through a couple different characters how they pick and choose which parts of their bible to believe.
I would have liked Mike to put Jacqui in her place when she made his not coming out to her all about her. The whole “How could you not trust us” scenario. It would have been nice for someone to make her ‘get it’.
The narration was pure Joel Froomkin/Leslie. So while it was good, it wasn’t great. He doesn’t have a wide span of voices, which was obvious, especially when Chris and Mike would speak. They sounded the same. I wish they had gotten a Spanish-speaking narrator. He would have been able to make Mike’s dad sound more natural. There were times when he almost sounded French rather than Latinx.
I wish the epilogue would have been flushed out a bit better, but overall I did like the story. It’s very YA, so as long as you keep that in mind, you might enjoy it.