Many thanks to NetGalley and Hachette for a digital ARC of this book in exchange for a review.

A lot of the elements in this book are a little ridiculous. However, this book was not written for me, a cynical 28-year-old. Young trans people are woefully underrepresented in YA fiction, and this book centres the experience of a trans character in a way that avoids slipping into the all-too-familiar habit of putting them through the wringer for the sake of the story. The plot sidesteps a lot of the expected tropes, which I found refreshing, and delivers a satisfying, well-earned ending.

3.5 stars, rounded up.

i really enjoyed this book. It had all the elements you have to have for a classic romance story - initial dislike, falling for each other, misunderstanding- and a whole lot more besides.
Noah has moved to a new school to escape all the comments and misgendering at his old school. Desperate to establish his credentials as male he joins a club, which turns out to be a disguise for the underground Borrow a Boyfriend Club. In his efforts to gain membership he has to impress (and romance) the annoying president Asher. This leads to various mishaps, before Noah starts to realise that he may be falling for him. Alongside the light hearted club storyline there are more serious issues dealt with. Noah has a lot of doubt about how people see him and whether he is good enough. Asher is looking for a sense of belonging/ family. This is a romance but it is also a story of acceptance and belief.

I urge you to look at reviews from trans reviewers because their better suited to talk about this story.

The best way to describe this book is that it's fine. It's perfectly average in everyway which is disappointing because I expected to at least have fun reading it and that did not happen. If not for my being given the arc I would have DNF'D.

This is my first time reading a book with an MC that's trans that's already transitioned so that was a nice change of pace. It highlighted that the journey doesn't end with transitioning, the journey after is still riddled with obstacles and having to prove that your transness is valid is an everyday battle.

For a book so concerned with a group dynamic these kids didn't feel like a close unit but rather a random assortment of people. The logistics of the club didn't make sense to me considering that the whole student body knew that it was a front for something else. Why would these kids pay for fake boyfriends to go to dances at their school where everyone knows that it's fake? Wouldn't secrecy be one of the selling points?

The stakes never felt high for me even though I was constantly being reminded that joining the club was important which contributed to my being both perplexed and annoyed with the play because it made zero sense to this day. I had zero idea what it about,  I couldn't envision any of the choreography (the descriptions were lacking) the muse for it was not explained in a way that made sense. The entire time the play was being talked about I was like, when will my suffering end?

My main issue is that none of the characters were ever developed beyond their initial descriptors upon our meeting them at the club tryouts. Intially it's okay because you need meaningful interactions to know people better but even as they interacted I felt bored by every single one. Even our MC is not spared from this blandness. I can't tell you anything else about Noah beyond him being a dancer.

I was unconvinced by the romance between Noah and Asher because they had no chemistry. I don't believe that they think anything of each other beyond possibly forming a friendship due to proximity. There were things set-up that could have been used to develop their relationship but weren't. Noah having to teach Asher how to dance, them having each others phone numbers so they could have texted, the dates they go on etc. If any of these moments were utilized I would have gotten a much better story.

In the end this feels like a decent idea that needed much more time to be developed but sadly wasn't given the time. If you're on the look out for a queer read without outing I say pick this up but I can'trecommend it beyond that.

CW: mention of transphobia, misgendering.

What a wonderfully queer coming-of-age and coming out story, filled with humour, growing pains and joy!
I'm not a huge romcom fan but this packs in well used tropes to create a journey of queer friendship and discovery.
Noah is delightfully written. His journey with identity, gender and sexuality was relatable, authentic and written with care.
I really liked how Noah's relationship with his parents and others affected his own view of himself, but didn't have a harrowing ending.
It's a fairly fast paced story with great, easy to read writing and overall I really enjoyed it!

Thank you to Netgalley and Hachette Children's for the ARC!

"I'm not a girl, thank you very much. I'm just very pretty."

A joyously queer, painfully relatable coming-of-age and coming out story that made me feel all kinds of growing pains again.

This delightful YA romcom packs in your favourite familiar tropes in a refreshingly new package — think Netflix’s *The Perfect Date but with serious self-discovery and beautifully queer romance.

Our narrator Noah was a delight — of course he’s sixteen, so he didn’t always make the best choices and was immensely frustrating at times but he’s literally a teenager so he was written pretty perfectly. His journey learning about his identity, gender and sexuality was of course difficult at times, but so authentic and written with so much love and care.

He never expected how much decision to act as a stand-in date for his classmates would change everything, and even though we can see what’s going to happen, watching Noah try to figure it out was absolutely spectacular. He made me cringe, he made me reminisce, laugh, cry and fall totally in love with him.

The story moves fairly quickly but gives us plenty of time to sit with Noah and his thoughts; his narration is very direct to the reader and meanders along with this thoughts giving us a real insight into his thoughts. And there was such a deep tension; not only because Noah is just trying to live his life and facing so many obstacles, but this book reminded me in visceral detail what a pressure cooker school was and how serious everything felt back then.

A heartwarming story about finding yourself and your people that made my face hurt from smiling.

This book deserves all the five star ratings and more. What an amazing debut!

Laugh out loud funny, cute and romantic and a super unique plot point that was fantastically written. Each member was a joy to learn about and when I read deeper into the story and found out their motivations it only made me love them all more.

Noah is an amazing mc and following his journey was a pleasure I'm so thankful I got to be a part of. I love any story with found family vibes and so TBABC has found a top spot on my "LOVED" pile. I'll definitely re-read this in the future and can't wait for Powars' next release.

Thank you!

I absolutely loved The Borrow a Boyfriend Club by Page Powars!
I had so much fun reading it and it even made me laugh a few times!

It was well written and
I absolutely loved the main character Noah and i finished the book really quickly as I had to see how it would end!

I definitely highly recommend this book as I know many people will love it just as much as I did!
Thank you so much for giving me the opportunity to read this book in exchange for an honest review.

I had a good time with this one! A great combination of thoughtful characterisation, memes (or at least the tone/vibes of memes in some of the dialogue), and originality.

I really appreciated that this was a book about a trans character where his being trans is crucial to the plot -- it drives his need to prove himsef, as well as a subplot about his efforts to secure a legal name change -- but it's not a coming-out story or a book about realising you're trans. Not that those stories aren't important too, but it's nice to see a book where the character's trans identity is neither the primary source of conflict nor a simple accepted fact that is never explored in depth, but somewhere in between. And the fact that Noah being trans isn't the main barrier or source of conflict in the gradually developing m/m romance here also meant a lot to me, because very often in trans romance, that *is* treated as a barrier to be overcome, even if it ultimately turns out to be a non-issue. Plus, as a dancer who has had a complicated relationship to both dance and my body because of gender stuff, I really enjoyed seeing a trans character embracing their love of dance and finding a way to feel like themselves while doing it.

Even though he's medically transitioned and is read as male with enough consistency to be able to keep it a secret that he's trans, Noah still grapples with dysphoria, as well as feeling unsupported by his parents. They're not unsupportive and they don't actively misgender him... but they don't call him by his preferred name, either, falling back instead on an old nickname somewhere between his deadname and his current name. I think that kind of "well intentioned but still hurtful" parental response is incredibly common, and under-represented in books, where parents are often either perfectly supportive or outright transphobic. I appreciated seeing that middle-of-the-road experience represented: Noah is luckier than many trans people, in that he's been able to medically transition at a young age and he's not facing much blatant transphobia, but he's been subjected to enough microaggressions to have moved schools to start over, and his parents are inadvertently contributing to them, so it's also not all plain sailing.

I also didn't realise how complicated it was to get a name change in Michigan. Wow, that's gotta be the sole aspect of transition where the UK is less complicated. Signing my deed poll in the pub suddenly seems incredibly easy. In other areas, this book made me realise how different being trans is across the world -- I didn't come out until I was in my twenties, but even if I had, medical transition isn't possible / legal for teenagers here. (And I've been on a waiting list for a first appointment for over four years, even in my 20s...) So reading YA books where the characters have already been able to access hormones and surgery always gives me a jolt of wistful jealousy.

Unlike many US-based stories that couldn't exist in the UK, though, I didn't feel alienated by this one. I sometimes find US contemporaries hard to follow, because they're rooted in school traditions and systems I'm unfamiliar with and, because they assume readers will know what they mean, nothing is explained much. Maybe it's because Noah is new to his school and so is experiencing things for the first time, or maybe it's just Powars' light but skilful touch on the explanations, but I found it easy to follow in that regard. I did slightly lose track of the timing at one point (I hadn't mentally acknowledged which day of the week the talent show was happening on, and couldn't figure out how it lined up with the name change), but I think that was probably on me and my tired brain.

The secondary characters also have their depth and their unique struggles. I have to say, some of the other members of the Borrow A Boyfriend Club did blur in my head, because I've never been any good at keeping track of names, but they still all brought a sense of personal conflict to the table, and depth beyond "hot guy in the background" -- even if Noah initially saw them as such. And Asher's complicated relationship with his familhy, his anxiety around parents and rebelliousness towards other authority figures, and his underlying loneliness helped to make him a compelling love interest.

Finally, I will say, that this book also made me feel incredibly old, but that's probably a good sign with a YA contemporary, not a bad one: it feels solidly aimed at its target audience in a way that reminded me I'm getting into my late twenties. The teens felt like teens, even if Noah is fairly mature in the sense of holding down a job alongside school and planning for the future. It's also one of the first times I've seen a YA book acknowledge that millennials are the parents now. I mean, as a young millennial, I am absolutely not old enough to be the parent of a teenager, but older millennials are! At last, a book that properly situates its generational references, and in doing so, strengthens the sense that Powars knows exactly who his target audience is and how they think, and is hitting the mark perfectly.

Thank you to NetGalley and Hachette Children's Group for approving my request to read this arc.

The Borrow A Boyfriend Club has been a book I’ve been highly anticipating and it didn’t let me down! I loved this book so much and I really connected to the main character, Noah, and really saw myself in his thoughts and insecurities. As a trans person, you always feel like you have more to prove than a cis person, or don’t get to enjoy certain things and still be seen as the person you are, instead of the person you’re worried people will judge you as being.

This book has some of the most honest writing and dialogue I’ve seen in a while, and I really enjoyed it. A definite five star book in my opinion.

No obvious trigger warnings stood out to me while reading, so I would recommend this book to anyone and feel confident they would enjoy it.

I can hardly put into words how much I loved this story, Noah was just a really great character
It had me laughing at times was all around heartwarming to read