When I stumbled across this on NetGalley I knew I wanted to read it.* That book cover has Boston (including where I actually live) on it, it’s an own voices LGBTQIA story, and it happens to be released in October and set in Salem, I mean COME ON how could I NOT request it. Unfortunately, it didn’t quite live up to my hopes for it. Maybe they were too high to start because the book started out strong but puttered out by the end.
Just Ash is the story of Ash who has spent their entire life as a boy who happened to have both male and female parts, but in the opening scene gets his period and a series of horrible events follow as he is forced to pretend to be a girl by his parents for some time until he finally sets his foot down.
Starting this book felt like I opened a door mid-conversation almost a century ago. Behind it were two gentleman sitting in a preserved gentleman’s lounge or office. I could almost smell the old leather furniture and the faint scent of cigars and I could see the wood paneling vividly as the two men leaned in to confer about titans of industry. And this is the problem with The Mental Dynamite series.
Once you start reading self-help novels, you open the floodgates to anything and everything. From journals and experiential books like 
Four the fourth installment of our nonfiction book group, we’re learning about the amazing Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sandra Day O’Connor. I thought I knew a lot about the “Notorious RBG,” but I knew nothing; and then add in what I learned about the FWOTSC (First Woman on the Supreme Court) and I’d say this was a pretty good addition to our year of biographies and autobiographies.
I didn’t think it was possible, but I liked this one even less thanÂ