Pride 2017: “Girl Hearts Girl” by Lucy Sutcliffe

Title: Girl Hearts Girl

Author: Lucy Sutcliffe

Published: June 24th, 2017

Publisher: Scholastic

Find the Author: Goodreads

I received this book for review on my blog! As always, my reviews are fair and unbiased.

An inspiring, uplifting and sympathetic story about sexuality and self-acceptance, Lucy Sutcliffe’s debut memoir is a personal and moving coming out story. In 2010, at seventeen, Lucy Sutcliffe began an online friendship with Kaelyn, a young veterinary student from Michigan. Within months, they began a long distance relationship, finally meeting in the summer of 2011. Lucy’s video montage of their first week spent together in Saint Kitts, which she posted to the couple’s YouTube channel, was the first in a series of films documenting their long-distance relationship. Funny, tender and candid, the films attracted them a vast online following.

Now, for the first time, Lucy’s writing about the incredible personal journey she’s been on; from never quite wanting the fairy-tale of Prince Charming to realising she was gay at the age of 14, through three years of self-denial to finally coming out to friends and family, to meeting her American girlfriend Kaelyn.

My Review

LGBT books are becoming rightly a huge part of YA literature. One of the first LGBT books I ever read was by Robin Talley and since then, they’ve become a huge part of my YA loves. Not only was I already cover-stalking Girl Hearts Girl, but I was so eager to get involved in Pride Month – my first year getting properly involved, thanks to Scholastic! I had always had a few ideas of what to do or post and considering having supported LGBT books all year round, I knew that my post had to be extra special to properly draw attention to the importance of LGBT representation in YA books.

Enter Girl Hearts Girl, a story that’s actually real and a memoir of all things! Pretty Little Memoirs started because of my own desire to write my memoirs of life, so it’s only right that I finally read a YA memoir too. Lucy’s story isn’t quite the typical YA boy-meets-girl, because Lucy has never been interested in having a Prince Charming whisk her away like in the fairytales. She’s known from her early teenage years that she liked girls. But it hasn’t always been easy for her. There were patches of denial, before finally coming out to her family and realising that she had to start believing in herself – and stop denying who she was inside.

But Lucy finds herself in someone else, too. Meeting online when she was seventeen, she started talking with a girl called Kaelyn from America. It’s clear, reading about their conversations and honesty with each other that they share a true, raw connection. They meet the summer that followed their first year of talking and since that day, Lucy and Kaelyn’s lives changed as they documented their relationship online through social media for the world to see; through highs and lows and the pressures, backlash and frank moments that I can truly feel Lucy’s voice echoing in my ear.

Girl Hearts Girl was a sheer slice of sunshine. As Lucy walks us through her life, I can’t help but smile and cry along with her on this extraordinary journey of self-acceptance and the power of love. I can’t rate this any higher. A shining example of Pride.

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