Boy Erased by Garrard Conley

Source: Goodreads

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Rating: 2.5 out of 5.

I came across an interview with Garrard, that got me interested in the book. It’s his Memoir about gay conversion therapy and his experience of growing up struggling with the non-acceptance of his sexuality. Garrard was enrolled in a program called Love in Action, which was a gay conversion therapy program.

I have read about gay conversion therapy and the conservative mindset against acceptance of the LGBTQ+ community. However, I did not find the book as good as I expected it to be. The writing is very bland and monotonous, which made it hard to get through a few pages in one go. The author was also going back and forth in the time instead of having a chronological sequence of events, which made it hard to keep track of events. It felt like I was reading the same thing over and over, and it got very repetitive at times.

Garrard mentioned that they were not allowed to take pictures or journal their experience in the therapy program, so everything in the book is a recollection of his memory. I acknowledge the courage it must have taken to document this book while revisiting this experience. However, as a reader, the writing was not engaging enough, and the timeline was not easy to follow.