Avril Lavigne’s “Sk8er Boi” meets Julian Winters's How to Be Remy Cameron in this YA contemporary debut swirling with romance, angst, and questions about what it means to be your true self.

As Stonebridge High’s resident bad boy, seventeen-year-old Wesley “Big Mac” Mackenzie has an unchecked anger problem and a habit of throwing kids into dumpsters. He’s also failing senior year and filling his phone’s storage with the useless photos he takes just for fun. So when his mom drags him to see The Nutcracker ballet over the holidays, it’s exactly the kind of thing he doesn’t want to do . . . until he sees Tristan Morgan. Mr. Nutcracker himself.

Wes knows he shouldn’t like Tristan; he’s a ballet dancer, for God’s sake, and Wes is as closeted as they come. But the more time they spend together, Wes can’t seem to get Tristan out of his head.

Driven by a new sense of purpose, Wes enters a major photography contest at school. In order to win, Wes must trade his skateboard in for textbooks, ditch his rowdy friends for the photography kids he once bullied, and blow up the bad-boy reputation he never wanted in the first place.

But Wes quickly realizes he has to take a stand—in more ways than one—if he's going to learn that being himself means meeting somewhere in the middle of who he is and who he wants to be.