She stumbles over her words and spills hydrochloric acid on herself when she's trying to flirt. The entire novel is told from the perspective of Regan, who is your typical sixteen-year-old girl: she's angry at her parents, self-conscious, and awkwardly obsessed with a boy in her chemistry class. Though the book is light on sex, drugs, drinking, and all those other vices that usually have people clutching at their pearls, it is still so controversial that it gets banned in some schools. In 2003, the book was published and became the first young adult novel to prominently feature a transgender character, making it a huge stride for LGBTQ literature. The idea makes her think that her mother must be a monster.Lunamay be about typical adolescent angst and the pains of growing up, but Julie Anne Peters's book is a landmark. When she thinks about how her mom always left her pills around, she wonders if she did it on purpose to induce Liam to commit suicide.She realizes that her mom has known that Liam is trans this whole time-that's why she can hardly reacts.Regan gets a flashback to this time way back in the day when she and Liam were playing in the pool and Liam damaged his penis because he wanted to be a girl.Regan finally screams at her mom to get off the freaking phone already and address the very serious family situation that's escalated in front of her-and her mom just screams that she can't handle this right now.This whole time, their mom is still on the phone doing work stuff. When Luna turns to leave, their dad tells her that if she walks out of the house, he doesn't want her to come back.Their mom continues to ignore the whole situation while their dad and Luna get into a fight Dad almost punches Luna while Regan looks on.

At first Dad thinks it's just a joke, but Luna sets him straight.Luna explains to their dad that she's a transsexual person and that she wants to change her name to Luna.

Their dad looks up from his breakfast and pretty much loses his mind when he sees Luna their mom doesn't seem too affected by it, though.

And then… without any fanfare, Luna comes down to breakfast dressed as a girl.

When Regan comes down to breakfast on Saturday morning, her mom is freaking out over some wedding planning stuff.

Luna by julie anne peters