Forward March

Gr 9 Up–It’s Harper McKinley’s last year as first chair saxophonist in the school marching band. While her conservative Republican parents want their family to stand out to aid her father’s presidential run, all Harper wants to do is blend in and focus on the band and her friends. She’s doing just that when suddenly, Margot, a girl she’s only spoken to once, bursts into her dorm to break up with her. Shocked, it’s then she learns that someone has been posing as her on a dating app, and exchanging explicit messages with Margot, a drummer in the marching band, and the biracial, dreadlocked daughter of the Canadian ambassador. The two become fast friends with added romantic tension while Harper works to figure out her own identity with the support of her friend Bellamy, who is bisexual, nonbinary, and uses they pronouns. Harper confides in them as she grapples with the realities of being a closeted asexual lesbian and a subject of interest for the paparazzi with a mysterious dating app scandal, a newly blooming love, and high-profile homophobic parents. At first glance this book appears to take on too much at once, but Quinlan skillfully weaves everything together brilliantly into one very natural-feeling, heartwarming, and compelling story following characters who teen readers will be glad to have met. Contains trigger warnings and resources.