Between Mom and Jo

This new teen novel by Julie Anne Peters (author of Define Normal) is a welcome addition to a slowly growing genre of fiction about same sex families. I'm not talking about picture books like Heather Has Two Mommies or books with a bit character who is gay, who sometimes ends up being like the Star Trek guy in the red shirt who gets killed when they go down to the foreign planet to explore. This novel is great because it's about a teenage boy who has two mothers ... god forbid that the little kids in the picture books (and real life) should have to grow up and have same-sex parents as teenagers, right? Between Mom and Jo follows Nick from the age of 3 into his teenage years, and how he copes with having two mothers - being teased at school for being gay (by default), having his mothers break up and have to experience a partial custody battle, and going through many pets who just don't want to stay alive. He identifies much more with Jo, who is not his birth mother and never adopted him, and so when he is forced to live with his mother and her new girlfriend needless to say he is not very happy. It is heartfelt, funny and I really wish that there were more books like this out there.