Forward March

by Skye Quinlan

Overview

What’s worse? Someone using your face for catfishing or realizing you actually do have a crush on the catfished girl?

Harper “Band Geek” McKinley just wants to make it through her senior year of marching band—and her Republican father’s presidential campaign. That was a tall order to start, but everything was going well enough until someone made a fake gay dating profile posing as Harper. The real Harper can’t afford for anyone to find out about the Tinder profile for three very important reasons:

1. Her mom is the school dean and dating profiles for students are strictly forbidden.
2. Harper doesn't even know if she likes anyone like that—let alone if she likes other girls.
3. If this secret gets out, her father could lose the election, one she's not sure she even wants him to win.

But upon meeting Margot Blanchard, the drumline leader who swiped right, Harper thinks it might be worth the trouble to let Margot get to know the real her.

With her dad’s campaign on the line, Harper’s relationship with her family at stake, and no idea who made that fake dating profile, Harper has to decide what’s more important to her: living her truth or becoming the First Daughter of America.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781645674412
Publisher:	Page Street Publishing
Publication date:	03/22/2022
Sold by:	Macmillan
Format:	eBook
Pages:	320
File size:	3 MB
Age Range:	14 Years

About the Author

Skye Quinlan (she/her) was born in California during an earthquake and raised in the Midwest, where cornstalks outnumber people. Forward March is her debut novel. When she’s not writing, you can find her at the nearest metaphysics or craft store, dressed up in cosplay at the nearest convention, or ruining the furniture in her basement with epoxy resin and paint. She still lives in the Midwest, with her wife, their dogs, and the occasional little human who comes to visit them often (their niece).

Editorial Reviews

"Quinlan skillfully weaves everything together brilliantly into one very natural-feeling, heartwarming, and compelling story [...] A wonderful ace rom-com bursting at the seams with representation [...]"
—School Library Journal

“I ate up Skye Quinlan’s prose like candy. Forward March is a fun, inclusive, gloriously band geeky romance that tugged hard at my heartstrings.”
—Robbie Couch, author of The Sky Blues

“Fresh, full of heart, and gloriously queer. Skye Quinlan hits all the right notes.”
—Tobias Madden, author of Anything But Fine

From the Publisher

06/01/2022

Gr 9 Up—It's Harper McKinley's last year as first chair saxophonist in the school marching band. While her conservative Republican parents want their family to stand out to aid her father's presidential run, all Harper wants to do is blend in and focus on the band and her friends. She's doing just that when suddenly, Margot, a girl she's only spoken to once, bursts into her dorm to break up with her. Shocked, it's then she learns that someone has been posing as her on a dating app, and exchanging explicit messages with Margot, a drummer in the marching band, and the biracial, dreadlocked daughter of the Canadian ambassador. The two become fast friends with added romantic tension while Harper works to figure out her own identity with the support of her friend Bellamy, who is bisexual, nonbinary, and uses they pronouns. Harper confides in them as she grapples with the realities of being a closeted asexual lesbian and a subject of interest for the paparazzi with a mysterious dating app scandal, a newly blooming love, and high-profile homophobic parents. At first glance this book appears to take on too much at once, but Quinlan skillfully weaves everything together brilliantly into one very natural-feeling, heartwarming, and compelling story following characters who teen readers will be glad to have met. Contains trigger warnings and resources. VERDICT A wonderful ace rom-com bursting at the seams with representation, this is a must-buy for all collections.—Kayla Fontaine

School Library Journal

2021-11-30
An ace band geek comes into her own in Quinlan’s debut.

High school senior Harper prefers to stay out of the spotlight. The daughter of the leading Republican presidential nominee (dad) and her private boarding school’s conservative dean (mom), she tries to focus on her position as first chair for saxophone in marching band and her best friends, queer Nadia and bisexual, nonbinary Bellamy. She couldn’t be more surprised to learn that her classmate Margot, the Canadian ambassador’s daughter, is being catfished—by someone posing as Harper. As the two strike up a real-life friendship that quickly turns romantic, Harper has to navigate her health (she has asthma exacerbated by anxiety), increasing friendship tensions, her burgeoning realizations that she might be a lesbian and asexual, decisions about privacy and her romantic life, and a family rift. Christian, her older brother who cut off contact with their toxic parents, is gay, an army veteran, and in recovery from addiction. Harper’s first-person narration satisfyingly hits the beats of many queer teen rom-coms, including triumphant growth in self-awareness and a tidy ending. It is immensely refreshing to see an asexual romantic lead whose sexuality isn’t a point of conflict in either her relationship or the broader narrative. Harper and most other characters default to White. Nadia is Indonesian, and Canadian Margot is biracial (implied Black and White).

Readers will welcome this addition to the ace YA canon. (trigger warnings, resources) (Fiction. 14-18)

Kirkus Reviews