This is precisely why having young adult queer stories like " I Kissed Shara Wheeler" is unbelievably important to both McQuiston and the LGBTQ community at large.
Having grown up in Louisiana, where McQuiston claims that the closest thing to an Indie bookstore was Barnes & Noble, they understand that many folks turn to the characters they've created to find a sense of community and belonging. McQuiston is acutely aware of the impact - and responsibility - they have as a proponent of queer community representation. "When I was growing up in the South," they say, "I did not have a lot of resources or a lot of even exposure to queer people in general…but especially not to find happy love stories that centered queer people." When asked about how it feels to have such an impact on the queer literary community, McQuiston describes the notion as extremely humbling.
Because teens are ridiculous sometimes in the most wonderful ways."Īn LGBTQ story like "I Kissed Shara Wheeler" is hugely important to the community. "With teenagers," McQuiston says, "you're really allowed to get messy and let them make a lot of mistakes. However, McQuiston feels that a key difference between " I Kissed Shara Wheeler" and their other work is that the characters are teens - so, inevitably, they act like teens. Similar to McQuiston's first two titles, readers can expect strong-voiced characters, passionate narration, and the underlined theme of finding a place where one belongs. McQuiston describes the plot of "I Kissed Shara Wheeler" as being about "a prom queen who runs away on prom night and leaves behind three people she kissed: her academic rival, the boy next door who has a crush on her, and her longtime quarterback boyfriend." The three characters left behind rally together to discover why Shara left - and what she's left behind.
" I Kissed Shara Wheeler" has the same elements of LGBTQ representation and romance told through a younger lens, all while not feeling condescending to the young readers who are already fans of McQuiston's work. While " I Kissed Shara Wheeler" is McQuiston's first official YA release, they know that young readers are already in their audience - and make a conscious effort to hold similarities between their first two books and their upcoming third. "I Kissed Shara Wheeler" brings LGBTQ visibility to the world of a fictional, small-town Christian high school.
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