Max, the so-called golden boy of the title of British author Tarttelin's second novel, is an adolescent with a secret. Though living as a boy, Max is intersex, possessing both male and female genitalia as well as genetic markers for both sexes. The secret is complicated by Max's parents being prominent barristers in their town near Oxford and his father's campaign for public office. The story is told from multiple perspectives, alternating among the voices of Max, his precocious younger brother, his mother, his love interest, and his doctor. The book begins with a horrific rape committed by a longtime family friend, one of the few who knows the truth about Max. VERDICT Any coming-of-age novel about an intersex teen invites comparisons to Jeffrey Eugenides's Middlesex, and this work does not fare well in that matchup. Though the use of shifting narrators is effective, Max is a little too wise and mature to be believable, and his younger brother feels similarly contrived for literary effect. Nevertheless, this is a sincere and compelling exploration of the issues facing an intersex teen, and it will have great YA crossover appeal. [See Prepub Alert, 11/19/12.]—Lauren Gilbert, Sachem P.L., Holbrook, NY

Max, an intersex teen, knows he is unusual but does not fully appreciate his situation until disaster strikes, affecting his entire family. Narrated by Max and his family and friends, this bittersweet story demonstrates the price of keeping secrets and being a sexual outsider.

In this intense and fearless U.S. debut from English writer Tarttelin, high school star Max Walker has good grades, good looks, the esteem of his classmates, and a strong family with successful parents. He also has a chromosomal pattern that is both male and female. Intersex children like Max are often assigned surgically to one gender or the other at birth, but Max's parents raised him as a boy while deciding against removing his female reproductive organs. Tarttelin gives us a ferocious introduction to one of the repercussions of that decision: Max is raped and becomes pregnant by a childhood friend who sees him as more girl than boy. After this early traumatizing scene, the novel stays bleak, as Max goes from "golden boy" to desperate. With empathy and imagination, Tarttelin describes an adolescent search for identity made monstrous by Max's uncertainty over that self-identifier most of us take for granted: am I a man or a woman? Tarttelin, through Max, struggles to get the other characters, and the reader, to grasp the pain of being intersex with the depth of understanding he longs for, but the love and acceptance of little brother Daniel shines throughout. (June)

In this intense and fearless U.S. debut from English writer Tarttelin, high school star Max Walker has good grades, good looks, the esteem of his classmates, and a strong family with successful parents. He also has a chromosomal pattern that is both male and female. Intersex children like Max are often assigned surgically to one gender or the other at birth, but Max's parents raised him as a boy while deciding against removing his female reproductive organs. Tarttelin gives us a ferocious introduction to one of the repercussions of that decision: Max is raped and becomes pregnant by a childhood friend who sees him as more girl than boy. After this early traumatizing scene, the novel stays bleak, as Max goes from "golden boy" to desperate. With empathy and imagination, Tarttelin describes an adolescent search for identity made monstrous by Max's uncertainty over that self-identifier most of us take for granted: am I a man or a woman? Tarttelin, through Max, struggles to get the other characters, and the reader, to grasp the pain of being intersex with the depth of understanding he longs for, but the love and acceptance of little brother Daniel shines throughout. (June)