Review: Dear Manny

Dear Manny by Nic Stone
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

It’s been quite a while since I read any Nic Stone books, and you can imagine my surprise when I learned that not only was she following up on Dear Martin and Dear Justyce with the promised final novel in the trilogy, but that it would be centered on, of all characters, Jared. Yes, the same entitled white boy who, in the first two books, seemingly could never understand how privileged he was, and how ignorant he was.

But then again, this is Nic Stome we’re talking about. She’s not afraid to take narrative risks and swing for the fences. She’s bucked a lot of trends in the literary sphere over the years. She’s spoken positively about her time in Israel at a time when many of her fellow YA authors are expressly anti-Zionist, and previously worked with an agent who was hated in the community merely by dint of living and working in Israel (though Stone does have a new agent now, but as far as I can see it was merely a case of her moving on in the business.) She’s tackled tons of tough subjects in her work - not only racial justice, but also mental health, and the messiness of teenage sexuality (I’m honestly still surprised there wasn’t a big brouhaha around Odd One Out as a result.) Even on the subject of race, though she’s quick to shine a withering light on white supremacy, she’s also challenged prejudices against white people - notably, in Dear Martin, when Jus’s mom refuses to accept that he’s seeing a white girl, whereas SJ impeccably proves her anti-racist bona fides, especially when she brings up to Jared that she’s Jewish and therefore wouldn’t count as white to many like him.

Now, Stone revisits the world of her first novel from the perspective of that same Jared Christensen, though he’s no longer the casual racist little shit he used to be. It’s taken some time, but he’s finally started to understand the systems that keep women and people of color down in the world, and he’s ready to help dismantle them. Especially in the face of a legacy student running for class president, a nakedly turbo-racist creep (whose ultra preppy name gets butchered to babble every time by Jared, Jus, SJ, et al.)

And then in comes a new candidate, Dylan, freshly transferred from an HBCU under mysterious circumstances.

Jared and Dylan easily double-team Jen Prescott LeIndustry Plant, or whatever the hell his name was, in debates with their shared progressive stances. But Dylan, as a Black woman, still has reason not to fully trust Jared, who can’t yet bring himself to challenge his own family on their bullshit.

And, also, Jared is crushing on Dylan despite himself.

So, wracked with feelings of all kinds that he struggles to understand, he writes letters to his old departed friend Manny, just like Justyce wrote to MLK and Quan wrote to Justyce.

It’s only in Stone’s hands that this narrative can be pulled off. It’s, again, a short book, but loaded for bear with drama and commentary. With its college setting and student council elections and tons of secrets being exposed, it dips a hand into the fount of dark academia as well, reminding me of Ace of Spades. It even tackles affirmative action, Latin white supremacy, sexual assault, book banning (inspired by incidents of the author’s own books being banned) and misogynoir in its pages, with all the care that Stone always brings to her books.

In the end, the story wraps up hella fast with quite a few threads left hanging. But that’s by design. Stone is ready to say farewell to these characters, and now, so must we.

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