Review: "It Gets Better...Except When It Gets Worse" by Nicole Maines

It Gets Better...Except When It Gets Worse by Nicole Maines
Published October 2024 via The Dial Press
★★★

As an adult, Maines is a successful actress, but she first made headlines at a far younger age—when she and her family sued the school district to allow Maines to use the bathrooms that fit her gender. Some of that story was told in Becoming Nicole, but (as Maines notes) that book was never really her story: it's her family's story, and maybe especially her father's story from a black-and-white conservative thinker to someone who would fight for his daughter, again and again and on a public stage.

It Gets Better...Except When It Gets Worse is doing double-duty here: first, it's Maines's story as she wants to tell it rather than a story that is being told about her and her family; second, it's written for a different audience than Becoming Nicole. I highly recommend Becoming Nicole, but I recommend it mostly for adult readers who want a deeper dive into the American landscape of trans rights and family dynamics. It Gets Better... is much lighter and more informal in tone, with plenty of slang and the occasional emoji, and definitely written with a more teen/young adult audience in mind. Your mileage may vary with the voice (I am too much an old and cranky millennial to stomach emojis in books, oh my dear god, I thought we'd finally gotten over people putting "omg" and "lol" in their books, and now this—Gen Z, what am I supposed to do with you), but there's no denying that Maines has a strong voice here, and strong opinions. This feels like a reflection of someone who has had to be so careful for so long and finally feels able to use her voice at full volume, and I'm here for that.

The structure is something like a series of interconnected essays. I typically respond better to memoirs that are less segmented (I'm quite a fast reader, so essays and short stories often feel like they end just as I'm getting into them), especially because some of the chapters here feel more soapbox than story. They're generally quite valid soapboxes, mind, and occasionally the stories Maines tells took my breath away:

My school's response to the bullying was to institute the 'eyes-on' program, just for me, which meant a teacher's aid [sic] was assigned to be my bodyguard each day, and they followed me around school. Not to protect me—I repeat, not to protect me—but to make sure I only used the bathroom they'd assigned to me. They'd follow me from class to class. If I had to use the bathroom during class, the teacher would stop me at the door and tell me I had to wait for whoever was assigned to escort me that day. (loc. 718*)

Overall I'm just happy that this is likely to reach a wide audience—both Supergirl fans and young adults who are interested in LQBTQ+ topics—and that Maine is finally in a place to make decisions for herself. The US is a scary place politically right now, and I hope Maine's voice only gets stronger. Emojis and all.

Thanks to the author and publisher for inviting me to read a review copy through NetGalley.

*Quotes are from an ARC and may not be final.