The school librarian gives Jamie a book about British wildflowers, except it's not about flowers, but a novel—Dance on My Grave by Aidan Chambers. It's the first book he's read where two boys can fall in love, and the notes in the margins show him others in his school have found it moving. It leads to further correspondence on the margins, unexpected friendships, first love, and resistance against the school's head teacher and angry parents.
The way this book was structured didn't appeal to me, and I struggled to warm to Jamie as the protagonist. And it showed that this book was written as a response to the author being banned from appearing in schools in an area, it seemed to lack depth. ( )

It’s 1994 and Section 28 is in full force. Even mentioning homosexuality in schools in England is illegal—forget about ‘promoting’ it through having books in the library. (Sound familiar?)
So when Jamie Hampton finds a book that’s about a boy who loves another boy in the school library he’s surprised—even more surprising is that there’s a note in the book. He writes a response and begins a correspondence with someone. Someone like him.
The footnote asides would have amused me as a younger person, but got tiresome as an older human. Still, it was nice that young people can see positive representation of themselves in fiction these days, which wasn't typical, really, in the 90s.
Growing up in the US, it was also interesting to 'experience' section 28 and being gay in Britain. Some of the notes about films, TV and music took me back. The book is autobiographical fiction and the author is my exact age, who also grew up in a small town, just in England, so it was a bit like seeing what my life would have been like had I grown up at the same time but in a different country. It wasn’t pretty, but there were moments of joy, as there always are. ( )