Thank you NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with an arc in exchange for an honest review!

Kicking my feet and squealing in adoration of this book.

This book ticks every single box I look for in an honest coming-of-age and coming out story. Anthony Nerada transforms a misunderstood bully into a believable protagonist and grants this generation with  a heartbreaking character arc that I was missing when I was growing up. 

Wesley 'Big Mac' Mackenzie is a punk: skateboarding through his high school's halls, failing all his classes and always getting into trouble. That's all people see when they look at him. Inside, however, he is full of anxiety, and pent-up anger no one ever taught him to address makes him terrified he is turning into his father. People expect him to fall into a stereotype and so he does. And honestly, who can blame him? 

But the story Nerada wrote is about defying stereotypes and creating your own narrative rather than falling into the one adults write for you. It was heart-wrenching to see Wes struggle with himself, unable to allow anyone entrance into the fortress he'd built to protect himself, agonising to read how he fully believed he was no better than his father (whom you'll have to learn about yourselves because it contains major spoilers). 

Wes is a teenager through and through, but he is also a senior in high school. With teachers and a guidance counsellor pestering him about grades and college, his first instinct is to ignore them all and close himself off. Gradually, he begins to realise that's not what he wants, which is followed by a convincing coming-of-age story including coming out.

There is romance, but it is not as central to the plot as Wes's story is. That isn't to say that I didn't love it because I certainly did. For me, it simply faded a little into the background compared to everything else Wes was dealing with.

In Skater Boy, Wes defies all  stereotypes and I will love him forever for it.