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Book Author(s): Laurie Frankel

This Is How It Always Is

This Is How It Always Is

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From Goodreads:

This is how a family keeps a secret…and how that secret ends up keeping them.
This is how a family lives happily ever after…until happily ever after becomes complicated.
This is how children change…and then change the world.

This is Claude. He’s five years old, the youngest of five brothers, and loves peanut butter sandwiches. He also loves wearing a dress, and dreams of being a princess.

When he grows up, Claude says, he wants to be a girl.

Rosie and Penn want Claude to be whoever Claude wants to be. They’re just not sure they’re ready to share that with the world. Soon the entire family is keeping Claude’s secret. Until one day it explodes.

This Is How It Always Is is a novel about revelations, transformations, fairy tales, and family. And it’s about the ways this is how it always is: Change is always hard and miraculous and hard again, parenting is always a leap into the unknown with crossed fingers and full hearts, children grow but not always according to plan. And families with secrets don’t get to keep them forever.

Rapid Rating: High. (just over the line from moderate)

Profanity includes 6 uses of strong language, around 60 instances of moderate profanity, about 20 uses of mild language, and fewer than 10 instances of the name of Deity in vain. There are derogatory terms for LGBTQ people. Sexual content includes a little talk about sex and a short sex scene, and frank discussions about body parts, puberty, etc.

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About Rapid Ratings

The Rapid Rating option allows Rated Reads to rate more books for content. A quick search of an e-book can show all instances of profanity and at least some of any sexual content or violence. Likely, most Rapid Ratings will be of books rated High.

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