GETTING IT

Acne-ridden, slightly pudgy Carlos is the quieter member of a quartet of cocksure, trash-talking high-school boys who’ve dubbed themselves “Los hornitos” since elementary school. Horny they are, and Sanchez captures their lusty, girl-crazy conversations with a humorously skeptical eye. Carlos talks the talk, but mostly pines after Roxy Rodriguez, the hottest and most popular girl in school. Inspired by the television show Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, he beseeches Sal, an openly gay guy at school, to make him over from pimply scrub to princely stud. Sal concedes—on the condition that Carlos promises to come to a Gay-Straight Alliance meeting—and soon Carlos’s new haircut, diet, bedroom redecoration and cleanliness nab Roxy’s attentions. All is not well in the house of love, however, and soon Carlos must face the fact that beauty is much more than skin deep. Sanchez spins an upbeat contemporary drama set against a colorful Latino culture. Tone and plot canter along at a cheerful, upbeat pace, but not without the subtly lingering sense of homophobia that pervades the characters’ conversations. Sanchez acts on these cues successfully and non-didactically, ultimately conjuring a universe where young men can come together, regardless of sexuality, to support one another. (Fiction. YA)