REVIEW: Not Not Normal by Peter E. Fenton

NOT NOT NORMAL

by Peter E. Fenton

Release Date: September 11, 2024

Review

I don’t read a lot of YA, but if they were all like this, I totally would. Not Not Normal was a touching and uplifting story that anyone who wasn’t ‘normal’ in school could relate to. Finding the tribe of people, friends or lovers, that appreciate you just the way you are.

Jordan and Nathan are both pretty special guys and they make each other's lives so much bigger and more interesting, while also supporting each other, in the ways they can, through the big emotions and frustrations they are experiencing in their lives.

It was such a warm and rich read, and I love the ease in which you could connect with the characters.

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Synopsis

Jordan and Nathan couldn’t be more different, but when order and chaos collide, opposites attract. Jordan is a bit of an oddball at school. He likes rules, routine, old sci-fi novels, and is often the victim of his bully’s torment. When new student Nathan joins the school, he wears down Jordan’s walls and, with his love, empowers Jordan to stand up for himself.

Nathan’s parents are going through divorce, and at a new school in a new city Jordan provides him with the stability he can’t find at home. Through their friendship and eventually their romance, Jordan embraces his newfound self-confidence and proclaims his love for Nathan in front of the school. Each is just what the other needs.

Not Not Normal shows readers that sometimes the qualities we need most can be found in and learned from the friends around us. We just need to let them in. Embracing your differences and facing the unknown can be scary, but with true friends and support, you can handle just about anything.

About Peter E. Fenton

It started with poetry. When Peter E. Fenton was having a difficult day, he would put pen to paper and dive into a world of imagination. None of these poems were published. They were kept in a book on a shelf for future reference. A way of looking back at a time and place in life.

But poems led to short stories...tales often told in letter form to amuse friends during their long summers away from home working jobs in theatre.

And then twenty years ago he met a composer and writer and they became life partners, and they got the ridiculous idea that perhaps writing musicals and plays would be fun. And so they did that. While his partner wrote on over twenty projects, Peter participated in four of those projects, and these plays were produced across the country, won awards and some were even published.

But life can't all be "play". There was also some work to be done, in this case a 42 year relationship with the Royal Ontario Museum, where Peter spent his time in palaeontology doing collection management and going on expedition in remote locations including the Canadian Rockies, the Northwest Territories and Nunavut.

When the time came to step away from the fossils at the museum, a new passion took hold ...the desire to write a longer narrative...a book... a gay romance. He wanted to write something that would draw on many years of living, loving and exploring the world.

And so with the kind support of his partner, he began writing his first novel, and a publisher expressed interest, and in the spring of 2022 The Woodcarver's Model was released and was a four time nominee in the Goodreads M/M Romance Readers’ Choice Awards.

Peter currently resides in Toronto, Canada with his partner (who still writes plays) and is now working on a series of gay detective novels. His upcoming novels include, Mann Hunt (the first of a three part series) which was just released by Pride Publishing in August of 2023, Not Not Normal (a teen romance) which will be released by Lorimer Publishing in 2024, and Hoodoo House (the second book in the Declan Hunt Mysteries series) that will come out in June of 2024.

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