Ben should be focusing on school maintaining his scholarships and making his father proud, but he meets Hannah, a girl from Natick’s sister school, and becomes distracted from his school life. This review has been corrected to remove an extraneous word. In Honestly Ben, Ben takes center stage as he confronts the aftermath of his relationship with Rafe. Agent: Linda Epstein, Emerald City Literary. Ben refuses to be labeled, and the result is a refreshingly honest exploration of modern relationships and an understanding that love can take many shapes and forms. Konigsberg again realistically explores what happens when one’s self butts up against the world’s expectations and assumptions. Ben isn’t homophobic, but that doesn’t make it any easier for him to see himself-captain of the baseball team, son of a farmer-as gay or even bisexual. The trouble is, Ben is in love with Rafe, but he can’t accept the idea of being in love with a boy. The companion to the award-winning Openly Straight, called 'eply satisfying and as honest as its appealing protagonist' ( Booklist ). He’s also having difficulty with Rafe Goldberg, his gay former friend (with whom he got quite close in Konigsberg’s Openly Straight), and might be falling for a girl named Hannah. He’s having a hard time in calculus, a subject that could torpedo his stellar GPA and ruin his chances at receiving the prestigious Pappas Award, which would look fantastic on his college résumé and provide a needed scholarship. Seventeen-year-old Ben Carver is under a lot of pressure.
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