You're the One That I Want

"Simon James Green is a brilliant author for young adults. He’s got a new book coming out very soon, called Gay Club! , and it sounds incredible. But he also does middle grade and picture books. The middle grade verges on the same themes. You’re the One That I Want is my favourite one, it’s funny and we don’t get enough funny books for teenagers. It’s laugh-out-loud funny, it’s cringingly funny, but there are some very rude bits in there as well. It’s about a teenage boy who has never had a boyfriend before. It’s not a coming out story, that has happened previous to the story. It is about him trying to find that first relationship and find his place in the school community through the power of the musical production that is happening, which is Grease, which is where we get the title from. So it is brilliantly good fun, but you’ve also got some really quite complex teenage romances going on in there as well. Falling for the wrong guy, thinking you like somebody, them turning out to be disingenuous and just not the person that you thought they were. And I think that is really good representation in an LGBT romantic comedy novel, to have stories that aren’t just boy meets boy and they live happily ever after. It’s the complications. Love is love whatever person you are falling in love with, and I think this story is an incredible example of that. And it’s funny. Can I say that again? Because it is really funny. Definitely, you learn a lot about theatre, which I didn’t know. I love musicals, but I’ve never been in one so I feel like I learned a lot about that as well, which was good."