In Huntingdon Hill Boarding School, homosexuality is treated like a mental illness. Unhappy endings for glbtq are far more the norm when examining earlier published works. This, however, is a very recent phenomenon. They describe being sick of the “sappy” endings modern glbtq teen fiction usually get. Some readers, actually, celebrate this novel’s unhappy ending. Lexie betrays Jinx to the school authorities and the protagonist is thrown out of school. In the traditional style of lesbian fiction, and lesbian teen fiction in particular, this story does not have a happy ending. She attempts to stand up to her, and the effort is not met with any sort of compliance. (spoilers follow) But eventually Jinx can no longer put up with being Lexie’s slave or plaything. She’d rather cry herself to sleep than risk offending anyone. The butch of this relationship is a pushover, a doormat. She orders Jinx around until the protagonist is doing things she would never otherwise consider. She is bossy, and always used to getting her way. Lexie turns out, however, to not be the ideal relationship partner. Lexie is obviously the femme of this relationship. She develops a crush (big surprise) on a pretty rich girl in the boarding school: Lexie. It’s one of those unspoken rules of the genre). It’s told in first person from the perspective Jinx, the main character (lesbians in lesbian teen fiction always seem to have bizarre names. The setting is in an all-girls boarding school (Huntingdon Hill Boarding School), which, I’m sure, did not seem clichéd at the time. The novel is set in the 1960s, specifically in 1964-1965. “Our friendship began on a clear, crisp October afternoon one month after the start of senior year.”Ĭrush by Jane Futcher, published in 1981, is a lesbian teen fiction story of romance and betrayal.

Crush by Jane Futcher