A Very, Very Bad Thing

Overview

Jeffery Self's "A Very, Very Bad Thing" follows Marley, a gay high schooler in North Carolina who has resigned himself to being one of very few openly queer kids he knows, let alone likes. That isolation breaks when Christopher arrives at his school: funny, attractive, and apparently just as interested in Marley as Marley is in him.

The catch is Christopher's home life. His parents hold rigid, conservative views about his sexuality, which forces the relationship into hiding almost from the start. Self follows Marley and Christopher through the ordinary joys and frictions of first love, complicated by the constant threat of exposure.

When a crisis finally arrives that neither boy can outmaneuver honestly, Marley starts bending the truth to keep the relationship alive, and each lie pulls him further from the people and certainties he started with. The novel is less interested in the romance itself than in what Marley is willing to do, and become, to protect it.

Love, Secrecy, and the Ethics of Lying

Self, previously known for "Drag Teen," uses Marley and Christopher's relationship to examine a familiar but rarely dramatized dilemma for queer teenagers: what happens when coming out isn't a single, controllable decision but something entangled in someone else's family, safety, and fear. Christopher's closeted status isn't treated as a plot obstacle to be cleared, but as a condition that shapes every choice the couple makes.

The book's real subject is the mechanics of deception born from care rather than malice. Marley's lies begin as small protective gestures and expand under pressure, and the narrative tracks the toll of maintaining them, on his sense of self as much as on his relationships with family and friends. That focus situates the novel within a broader tradition of young adult fiction interested in the gap between what teenagers are told about honesty and the compromises real intimacy sometimes demands, particularly for those whose relationships aren't safe to live openly.

Why A Very, Very Bad Thing Has Been Challenged

Objections to the novel have centered on its depiction of a same-sex teen relationship and the sexual content associated with that relationship, concerns that recur frequently in challenges to LGBTQ+ young adult fiction. Some critics have also pointed to the book's candid treatment of parental rejection and a closeted teenager's conflict with his family as inappropriate for younger readers, arguing it normalizes concealment from parents. Others have taken issue with Marley's escalating dishonesty, reading the character's lies as morally instructive material unsuitable for a school library despite the narrative's clear interest in the consequences of that behavior. In this catalog, the book has drawn a combined total of 3 recorded challenges across the state and district levels, consistent with the broader pattern of scrutiny facing novels that center queer adolescent experience.