Book Review: Tart by Becki Jayne Crossley

Becki Jayne Crossley’s début novel, Tart, is a queer coming-of-age, friends-to-lovers story set in a small British village where everyone knows everyone, and gossip is hard to avoid. When Libby becomes the subject of that gossip, after a video of her ‘cheating’ on her boyfriend, Dan goes viral, the same night he has an accident on his bike that sends him into a coma, the whole school quickly turns on Libby. Isolated, Libby finds friendship in the (not-so) new girl, Neha, who everyone else ignores.

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Having moved from the more open and accepting Market Stepton, to small village life in Chipping Hollow, Neha has to contend with not only her grief and the isolation of being an outsider in such a tight-knit community but also a world of casual racism, homophobia, rigidly enforced gender norms, and school politics. Many of these attitudes are, in Crossley’s writing, clearly fuelled by tradition and religion, a reflection of the author’s own religious upbringing.

The novel bursts into action from page one, opening with Dan’s accident. Then, as the novel progresses, we follow two narrative streams. In present-day, the reader sees Libby become the target of misogynistic bullying and ostracisation, finding solace in her blooming friendship with Neha, but is there more to that friendship than it first seems?

In chapters exploring the lead-up to Dan’s accident, readers get an insight into Libby and Dan’s relationship in its early days, and gain revelations of well-held secrets. These chapters work backwards in time and can make for slightly confusing reading at first; however, the writing does lend itself well to drawing out the revelations and building suspense about what really went down.

The novel explores themes including: gender and queer identity, consent, misogyny and slut-shaming, religious ideology, and diverse family set-ups. It is a novel of warmth bursting with queer joy but with a sharp undercurrent of homophobia and hurt.

Tart is a tale of gay panic on two sides of a coin; the fear of coming out in an old-fashioned, traditional community and the heart-racing giddiness of first queer crushes. Full of friendship, kindness amongst the brutal, and queer awakenings, Tart is as sweet as its freshly-baked namesake.

With thanks to Netgalley for the review copy of this book.

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