This Is How It Always Is by Laurie Frankel

    I'm going to come right out and say that this book made me uncomfortable. It was beautifully written and had me totally engrossed the entire time, but I was certainly challenged while reading it. I picked this book up because there was so much buzz about it and I don't like being out of the book loop. I knew what the main idea was, but the story tackled it a little differently than I was expecting.

    Penn and Rosie are doing their best to raise their five children. Without really meaning to, they carry one big secret. Their daughter, Poppy, is not like the other little girls around her. She has to go into the bathroom to change into her pajamas at slumber parties and her parents spend hours on the internet researching hormone blockers. This is because Poppy used to be Claude. The story follows the family over a decade as they navigate life and learn about acceptance of others and oneself.

    Transgender issues and rights are not topics I am very familiar with and honestly, not ones I intentionally seek to learn more about. But I realize stories like this one are reality for people and families around me. And I really believe this gave me a perspective I wouldn't have had otherwise. Although this is only one story and there are many more unique stories out there, I feel my understanding of this challenging, but timely topic has been enhanced.

    I suppose the hardest thing for me to grasp about this story was how easily Rosie and Penn accepted the idea of Claude becoming Poppy. I don't pretend to know how to raise kids, or know what it means to love one's child unconditionally, but there was so little resistance coming from the parents which didn't strike me as very realistic. In general, I thought the majority of characters in this book were very accepting of Poppy's transformation. Clearly there are scenes that stand out to refute that claim, but I mean overall, and especially at the end (sorry, slight spoiler), everyone is just pretty much hunky dory about everything. It's not that I wish bad things for Poppy's character, I just had an impression that things for her and her parents would take a lot more time, explaining, fighting, pushing against the system, etc.

    No matter how I feel about the content though, Frankel is, without a doubt, an excellent writer. My favorite parts of this story were all the bits and pieces of the family throughout the years. How Rosie and Penn fell in love, "watching" the older boys grow up, Grumwald and Princess Stephanie (and how they came full circle!), Poppy and Aggie tapping on each other's windows and more. The real heart of this book is family and love and I can't argue with that.

 4/5 Stars