Leaving behind Texas for her new home in Rhode Island is hard enough for middle schooler Lacey, but leaving behind her best friend Grace feels complicated and impossible. Lacey and Grace have been inseparable for so long that they’re Lacey-and-Grace. Grace’s social difficulties and the resulting bullying from her peers at school bled into Lacey’s social life too, making this move – as ashamed as Lacey is to admit it – the chance to reinvent herself.
At her new school across the country, Lacey could be normal and maybe even cool. She begins preparing for her previously rescheduled bat mitzvah and gets cast in a lead role in her school’s eighth grade musical. Theater is a massive deal at this school, but there’s a problem. It’s a long-standing tradition for students to share a kiss with one of their co-stars. Lacey has never kissed anyone, and she’s not entirely sure why the choice to kiss a boy makes her nervous in a completely different way than when she talks to the other new girl, Violet.
“When You’re Brave Enough” by Rebecca Bendheim is a sparkling middle-grade debut that explores the nuances of coming out as a lesbian in middle school, using that label proudly on the page. The conversations Lacey has with her parents about coming out are particularly impactful, including how a parent’s fears about homophobia can create pressure and grief. As someone who came out as a lesbian in middle school, I connected deeply to Lacey in those moving scenes.
Lacey’s queer identity, Jewish identity and the intersection between the two are treated with importance. In her rigorous reading of Anne Frank’s diary, Lacey connects with Anne’s early romantic experiences with girls as a way of understanding her own emerging feelings. Lacey connects to the bravery in Anne’s story while she works through her internalized homophobia and the intentional distance she created in her friendship with Grace.
As Lacey’s fears around her identity deepen, so does that distance between her and Grace. Lacey is no longer sure she can show up as the person she and Grace want her to be: someone who is confident enough to walk away from social pressure, even at the risk of losing friends. Bendheim portrays what it feels like to accept yourself and embrace your differences at the pivotal time of middle school in a refreshingly honest way. Lacey is, at times, not brave enough – including in ways that cause harm to Grace and their friendship. Witnessing her internal accountability and shift toward courage and honesty was a genuine joy as a reader.
Many of us have been Lacey and Grace at different times in our coming-out journeys, and this novel doesn’t simplify the resolution of that hurt. “When You’re Brave Enough” transported me back to my experience as a queer middle schooler, and is sure to be beloved by many young people who are figuring out what bravery means to them.
Fin Leary (they/he) is a transgender and autistic author, a program manager at We Need Diverse Books and a writing instructor at Emerson College and GrubStreet. Fin is the editor of the science fiction anthology “Future States of Stars.” They are a contributor to the young adult horror anthology “These Bodies Ain’t Broken,” edited by Madeline Dyer (Page Street Publishing, 2025). Fin was a 2024 Lambda Literary Emerging LGBTQ+ Voices Fellow for Young Adult Fiction, and their fiction has been supported by Tin House, Sundress Academy for the Arts, GrubStreet and the Changemaker Authors Cohort by the Narrative Initiative. Fin lives with their orange literary cat and a rainbow bookshelf outside of Boston.
A version of this story appeared originally on the Porter Square Review of Books. Buy “When You’re Brave Enough” from Porter Square Books.
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