Honestly Ben

Honestly Ben by Bill Konigsberg is the sequel to the book Openly Straight. It is a contemporary, YA, LGBT romance.In Openly Straight, Rafe Goldberg decides to attend a new school without telling anyone that he is gay. Everyone assumes he is straight and he allows the misconception. However, when he falls in love with his friend Ben and they begin a relationship, Rafe decides to come clean. Ben is devastated that Rafe lied and that he ever developed real feelings for a guy. Ben can’t handle his deception and ends their relationship.This book picks up where Openly Straight left off. Ben is feeling a lot of pressure in the second half of his junior year. His father expects him to be the best, while providing nothing in terms of emotional support. His baseball team requires more of his time and effort and wants him to be a leader. He receives a prestigious acknowledgement from the school that necessitates him to write a speech. His GPA had gone down due to the distractions from the previous semester. He meets a girl that he is very interested in. And then there is Rafe whom Ben needs in his life, regardless of the past. He begins to see that everyone wants something different from him and that leaves him no time to be Ben.It is rare for me to be desperate for a second book but I needed this. When Openly Straight ended, my heart was broken and I refused to believe it was the end for these characters. This book gave me just about everything I needed. Ben is an interesting character. He is quiet, shy and extremely intelligent. He doesn’t fit in with his jock friends. I love the dichotomy between Ben and Rafe, who is extremely outgoing and fits in everywhere. For me, Ben and Rafe felt like some of the most real characters I have ever read. They are complex and flawed in the most wonderful way. But I also love the secondary characters. Toby is one of the most fun, brave people and his growth in this book was brilliant. When he cried over the support of his schoolmates, I wanted to cry myself.Ben’s evolution is astounding. I am not willing to give away the story, but suffice it to say, he learns a lot about himself and his world throughout this book. With the help and patience of Rafe, he begins to understand what is important.I know the author received some flack because Ben did not consider himself gay regardless of the relationship with Rafe. I could see both sides of the argument. But I think Ben didn’t want to be caught up in labels and that makes a lot of sense. Everyone has a right to think of themselves however they want and Ben simply didn’t know where he stood.Honestly Bill (Konigsberg), I would like another book. I don’t know if that’s the plan but I would love to see more of Ben’s journey and spend more time with these boys that I have grown to love. I think the purpose was to not wrap up this story in a neat little bow, but in this case, I kind of would have liked that.I give this book 5 stars. I have already purchased a copy for a friend. This is a must-read series.

I purchased this book as part of a 30 Days of Pride Book Review project. This is that review:This book is the sequel to Openly Straight, and since I am reviewing both books I did my best to give an accurate description of this book and my honest reactions to it without spoiling too much about the plot of either book….Which is actually a little tricky, but here we go.Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “to be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.” That quote had always resonated with Ben Carver, but now it was different somehow. Because he wasn't sure who his “self” even was. He was just beginning to realize that he had lived his whole life up to this point trying to be his father's idea of what a Carver man should be: quiet, serious, hardworking, and above all not an embarrassment. Had everything blown up last semester more because he’d been angry that his best friend had lied to him or more because he’d been afraid of his own feelings… and of what those feelings meant about who Ben was? How his baseball teammates would see him? How his father would see him? Was it possible to love someone, if loving them also means going against who you always believed you were?I actually preferred this book to the first.Our protagonist in the first book, Rafe, and our protagonist here, Ben, both struggled with identity, separate from their families and from labels. They both had to come to terms with a sense of self, while juggling the intricacies of relationships, both platonic and romantic, and facing up to how easy it is to hurt someone you care about, without meaning or wanting to.Maybe, I just prefer Ben’s story because he feels more accessible to me. He’s introverted to the point that he comes across surly. He worries about money and recognizes Rafe has some rich kid privileges that make him slightly insufferable. He comes across as a wet blanket, because he doesn't think the same things other teens think are fun are actually fun and is instead a nerd for things like history and literature.I also liked the narrative style better here. Some of Rafe’s story was told as a journaling experiment back and forth with his English teacher, and I really didn't miss those asides here.We get the same characters again, but we get to see them from a new perspective, which is always an interesting exercise. And while this is a successful continuation of the previous story, it is also a successful new story in itself.What I didn't care for so much was that some of the lessons the author wanted Ben (and his reading audience) to learn were sometimes ham-fistedly delivered in, “You know, I learned something today,” after school special style. It's the kind of clumsy stuff YA authors do that makes it seem like they don't think teens are very smart. But maybe that's just me.Should you read this book. If you read the first book, you are probably going to want to read this one. I was happy to buy it in hardback to find out what happened next, sooner rather than later. So go for it… but, you know, probably read Openly Straight first.So, let's weigh it in on the rating scales invented for this project.I think this does slightly better than its predecessor on my Queer Counterculture Visibility Scale, which I invented to determine how much each book shined a light on less visible members of the queer community. Ben has a unique sexual identity, one that he has to struggle with and one that he has to force people, even people who think they are being open minded, to accept. I like that he stays true to how he feels and doesn't let anyone else put him into a box he doesn't feel he fits in. That, to me, is the essence of pride. Ben also has to struggle with class and money on top of his sexuality, which the first book didn't go into. A side character, that is in both books, comes out as gender fluid in this book. A side character, that is in both books, is speculated to be possibly asexual in this book. The widely held trope of bisexuality being a “gateway” to admitting you are gay is introduced but the characters discussing it decide neither of them really believe that. They think some people are bisexual. There is consideration of how homophobia and misogyny sort of complement and perpetuate each other. So we get a little bit deeper into some of the other sides of the community. I'm putting this book at a:3.5 out of 5On the Genre Expectation Scale, I'd say, like its predecessor, it does fairly average. I think of this as a mostly typical YA finding yourself / coming out story, but like the previous book, it maybe bends the genre a little bit, this time in the way the main character identifies and how his not allowing people to force him to come out in the way they expect him to is a different kind of coming out altogether. I'm putting it at:3.5 out of 5 Stars

In 'Openly Straight', 17-year old Ben was confronted by his sexual attraction to his best friend, Rafe, and was angered and traumatised when Rafe belatedly told him that he was gay. In this captivating sequel, Ben (in a way which many of us have experienced) explores his attraction to a girl. But whereas he feels attraction and arousal, Hannah cannot compete with the intensity of Ben's feeling for Rafe. In this book, the relationship between Ben and Rafe becomes both deeper and more complex. Ben starts to come to terms with who he is, rather than trying to be the person his loving but repressive and homophobic father would like him to be. The road he takes is a rocky one and the only definition of his sexuality that Ben arrives at by the end of the book is that he is 'gay for Rafe'. That is enough for him, for now.This is a book written for late teens but any older reader, such as me, remembering what it was like to wrestle with one's sexuality and to try to be someone one was not, will find it powerful, moving and persuasive.

While Rafe and Ben getting a happyish ending is nice I'm not sure this sequel was at all necessary. The plot of Ben's sexuality was eye-roll worthy and nothing in it struck as particularly pleasant or interesting to read. It could have been about 50 pages shorter too and still cover all the plot.It feels like the author wanted to cover Ben's side of the story but really had enough material to fill out a few chapters and just threw in Everything Else He Could Think Of to fill it.

This book was recommended to be read by the LGBTQ+ book group I help run. It is about a young gay man's time in boarding school in America ....... Ban has supportive parents, but wants more, and it is about finding himself. Our whole group loved the book.An easy, simplistic, well thought through read for those aged from 14 up - thoroughly recommended!

I read Openly Straight before I read this, but actually this works on its own. Bill Konigsberg again does a great job with a character who makes unconventional choices when it comes to his life decisions, and he’s very good at building believable, sympathetic characters. This was a real joy to read.

I fell in love with this series when I finished openly straight I went straight into the the fuller short story openly honestly and then straight I to this book honestly ben, the books are so captivating and warming they made me feel so happy and I like the little bid to David levithan in this book too.