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Verdict: A patient, beautifully observed queer coming-of-age novel with one of the best-drawn heroines in YA, held back by a first half that many readers find too long and an ending that stops rather than resolves.
Best for: Readers who want literary character work over plot, who are ready for grief, religious homophobia and a conversion-therapy setting, and who can accept a first love that does not end in a couple.
Heat level: ★★★☆☆ (3/5 — open door, per romance.io)
Rating: ★★★★☆ (3.9/5 — a 4.06 Goodreads average across 61,067 ratings and four starred trade reviews, against a persistent complaint about length)
Tropes: Queer awakening, coming of age, first love, secret relationship, a girl with a boyfriend, small town, religious family, conversion therapy camp, found family, grief.
The Miseducation of Cameron Post by Emily M. Danforth is a standalone, traditionally published literary coming-of-age novel for young adults, set in Miles City, Montana, between 1989 and the early nineties — a small town where Cameron, orphaned at twelve on the same day she first kisses a girl, grows up under an evangelical aunt until her feelings for the beautiful, very taken Coley Taylor get her sent to a camp built to cure them.
It holds a 4.06 average across 61,067 Goodreads ratings, collected starred reviews from Kirkus, Booklist, Publishers Weekly and School Library Journal, and became a Sundance-winning film in 2018. It has also been banned or challenged in schools more than a dozen times. The reviews split in a narrower, more specific way than that record suggests, and the split is worth understanding before you start.
What Is The Miseducation of Cameron Post About?
This is queer YA written like adult literary fiction, and readers say so constantly. It is also, by now, a period piece: the early nineties in rural Montana mean a church-centred town, no internet, and no vocabulary on hand for a girl who knows she likes girls. It covers several years of Cameron’s life across 470-odd pages, so it moves at the speed of memory rather than plot.
Cameron is defined by what she has lost and what she cannot say. Her parents are dead, her guilt about that is irrational and total, and her closest adult is Aunt Ruth, a born-again Christian who loves her and has no framework for her. Coley Taylor, the cowgirl with the boyfriend, is the book’s romantic centre and its fault line. Everything is told in Cameron’s retrospective first-person voice — dry, funny and precise — which is what makes the length bearable for its fans and unbearable for its critics.
What Makes This Queer Coming-of-Age Novel Work
- Cameron herself: The single most-praised element. On StoryGraph 81% of reviewers say the book has strong character development and 82% call its characters lovable, and reviewers call Cam witty, brave, multidimensional and true to life.
- The sense of place: Miles City and the early-nineties period come up in half of the most popular Goodreads reviews I sampled, almost always as praise for how specifically the town is rendered.
- Aunt Ruth: The antagonist is not a cartoon. One popular review calls it tragic to watch someone who so clearly wants the best for Cam push her into a mould she can never fit, which gives the forbidden-love thread real weight.
- Faith handled with nuance: Kirkus singles out how carefully the book treats sexuality inside a religious family and community. The counterweight: a few readers feel the book loses momentum once Cam reaches the camp.
- The critical consensus: Four starred trade reviews for a debut, and Kirkus calls it “a sophisticated read for teens and adults alike.” Readers broadly agree.
Book Synopsis
The summer Cameron Post is twelve, she spends a sleepover with her best friend Irene doing something she already understands she should not tell anyone about. The next morning she learns her parents have died in a car accident, and the first thing she feels, before grief, is relief that they never found out. That relief turns into guilt, and the guilt settles in for years.
She is left in the care of her Aunt Ruth and her grandmother, and Ruth brings her faith with her. Cam learns to disappear in plain sight, drifting through a town that has one idea of what a girl should grow up to be, and quietly works out that she will never be it. She learns early which feelings to keep to herself.
Then Coley Taylor arrives in high school: pretty, confident, pickup-driving, and equipped with the perfect boyfriend. The two become inseparable, and the friendship begins to slide toward something neither can name out loud in a place like this. Cam knows exactly how dangerous it is to want what she wants in Miles City. The question the book spends its middle building toward is what happens when somebody else finds out, and what an aunt who loves her will decide needs fixing.
My Review
Cameron Post is the reason to read this book, and she is one of the most fully realised narrators in queer YA. Her voice is dry and observant and very funny in places you would not expect, and Danforth trusts her to carry grief, desire and shame without once turning her into a lesson. The book knows what it is like to be a gay kid in a place with no room for one — not as a tragedy but as a daily practice of hiding — and it gets that texture right in a way readers keep describing as true to life.
The second strength is how carefully it handles the adults. Aunt Ruth is frightening precisely because she is kind, and the camp staff are sincere rather than sadistic. That restraint is why the conversion-therapy section hurts more than a louder book would, and why the friendships Cam makes there — with kids who have also been sent away to be repaired — feel like a lifeline rather than a plot device.
Where it struggles is length, and this is not my private complaint: it is the most common criticism across every layer of the reviews, from the popular four-star write-ups down to the one-star pile. Roughly a third of the one- and two-star reviews I sampled name the length or the pacing, about as many simply call it boring, several come with a “did not finish” attached, and one three-star reviewer argues a significant chunk of both halves could be cut. Close behind is the ending, which a steady share of low-star readers call abrupt, a “cop-out” or lacking closure. A smaller group say not enough happens, and at least one reviewer objects to how the book’s Native character, Adam, is written.
The expectation to reset is the camp. The film, the cover copy and even Amazon’s current subtitle lead with conversion therapy, but Cam does not get anywhere near God’s Promise until roughly the halfway point. This is a grief-and-growing-up novel that becomes a camp novel late. If the camp is what drew you, be ready to wait for it; if the camp is what worried you, half the book is somewhere else entirely.
My honest note: A five-star heroine in a book that asks for more patience than many readers will give it. If you read for voice and character, this is close to essential. If you need a plot moving and a romance resolved, it will test you.
| Element | In The Miseducation of Cameron Post |
|---|---|
| Central relationship | Cameron Post & Coley Taylor — best friends sliding into a secret first love, with Coley’s boyfriend in the way |
| Core tropes | Queer awakening, first love, secret relationship, coming of age, small town, conversion therapy camp, found family |
| Setting | Miles City, Montana, 1989 to the early 1990s, then the God’s Promise camp |
| Heat level | 3/5 — open door; moderate per StoryGraph |
| Series | Standalone — no sequel; adapted as a 2018 film |
| Content notes | Homophobia and religious bigotry, conversion therapy, self-harm, death of parents in a car accident, grief, sexual content, alcohol, cancer, ableism |
How Spicy Is The Miseducation of Cameron Post?
A 3/5, with a caveat. romance.io indexes it — unusually for a YA title — and rates it 3 of 5, “open door,” but on only 70 ratings, so treat the band as a rough reading rather than a firm one. Reader reports line up: StoryGraph’s crowd-sourced warnings list sexual content as moderate rather than graphic, and the intimate scenes are frank enough that some readers and parents object to them. The publisher’s reading age is 14 and up. Nobody reads this for the heat, and nobody says it is the point.
The element worth knowing in advance is that the sexual content, along with the swearing, is part of what gets the book pulled from school lists — some low-star reviews object to it on exactly those grounds. Beyond that, no reviewer I found flags anything more explicit. If you want a queer historical coming-of-age at a similar register, Stone Butch Blues sits in the same band for adult readers, while Last Night at the Telegraph Club is a notch softer.
Who Should Read This Book?
You’ll likely love it if: you read for voice and interiority over plot, you want a queer historical coming-of-age with a real sense of place, you can sit with grief and religious homophobia, and you like endings that leave a door open.
You may want to skip it if: slow pacing makes you put books down, you want a romance with a couple at the end, conversion therapy or self-harm is too close to home right now, or you need a story to tie off its threads.
In short: a remarkable narrator and an honest book, paid for in length.
What Readers Are Actually Saying (September 2026)
This is a fourteen-year-old debut, and the discourse around it is the discourse of a modern classic rather than a new release. There is no current viral moment. TikTok has a scattering of organic videos, including movie-versus-book comparisons, but nothing that reads as a trend, and much of it traces back to the 2018 film, Desiree Akhavan’s adaptation starring Chloë Grace Moretz, which won the U.S. Grand Jury Prize at Sundance. That film is the book’s second life: eight of the thirty two-star Goodreads reviews I sampled mention the film, some of them from readers who came to the book through it. The other driver is censorship. PEN America documented a Delaware school board pulling it from a summer reading list over profanity, and bannedindex.org counts it banned or challenged at least 16 times — the kind of record that keeps it on “read the banned books” lists every September. Reddit could not be checked from here, so I cannot report on its footprint there. Amazon, for what it is worth, currently shelves it at #7 in Teen & Young Adult Christian Social Issue Fiction.
The audiobook is narrated by Beth Laufer for Audible Studios, running 14 hours 17 minutes and released in June 2013.
Why readers love it (according to the discourse): Cameron, first and most consistently — reviewers call her witty, brave and multidimensional, and the StoryGraph numbers back them up. Then the writing, which readers and critics alike describe as literary, rich and detailed; Wendy Darling’s top Goodreads review says it reads more like adult literary fiction than typical YA. The Montana setting is praised almost as often. StoryGraph’s mood data is emphatic: 89% emotional, 63% reflective, 55% sad. Its did-not-finish rate there is just 2%, which is low for a book this often called too long — readers complain about the length, and then finish anyway.
What readers argue about and complain about: Length, above everything. It is the recurring complaint in the popular reviews and the dominant one in the low-star pile; 46% of StoryGraph readers tag it slow-paced, and School Library Journal, while starring it, reportedly faulted the pacing and length too. The ending is the second theme — abrupt, open, and to some readers unfinished. Third, a smaller “nothing happens” contingent who find the plot too thin to justify the page count, echoed by Amazon’s own summary of reader reviews. After that come individual objections worth attributing as such: one reviewer questions the portrayal of Adam, and another notes, with some irritation, that nearly every girl Cam befriends turns out to be queer. The genuine split is the ending itself — some readers find the lack of resolution honest and hopeful, others feel short-changed.
The standalone question worth asking first: it is complete in one volume, with no sequel. Danforth’s follow-up novel is Plain Bad Heroines, a sprawling queer gothic that sits nearly half a point lower on Goodreads at 3.63 across roughly 29,600 ratings. If Cameron’s voice is what you loved, that one is a different kind of book, so go in expecting a change of register.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is The Miseducation of Cameron Post a romance?
Not primarily. It is a literary coming-of-age novel with a major romantic thread between Cameron and Coley Taylor. Readers who expect a genre romance with a happily-ever-after tend to rate it lower.
How spicy is The Miseducation of Cameron Post?
A 3/5. romance.io rates it “open door” on a small sample of 70 ratings, and StoryGraph readers tag the sexual content as moderate. Nobody reads it for the heat, and the publisher’s reading age is 14 and up.
Does The Miseducation of Cameron Post have a happy ending?
Not a conventional one. The romance with Coley does not end with the two of them together, and the book closes on an open, hopeful note rather than a neat resolution. The ending is one of the most debated things about it.
Is the book different from the movie?
Yes, substantially. The 2018 film, directed by Desiree Akhavan and starring Chloë Grace Moretz, centres on the conversion camp, while the novel spends roughly half its length on Cameron’s childhood and adolescence in Miles City before she ever arrives there.
Is there an audiobook?
Yes. It is narrated by Beth Laufer for Audible Studios, runs 14 hours 17 minutes, and was released in June 2013.
If You Loved The Miseducation of Cameron Post, Read These Next
The closest match is Last Night at the Telegraph Club, another historical queer coming-of-age about a girl finding herself in a hostile era, with a tighter plot. For a lighter small-town YA with a hopeful queer romance at its centre, try You Should See Me in a Crown. And for the adult, working-class counterpart to Cameron’s story of surviving a world that wants you changed, Stone Butch Blues is the classic.
For more in this register, browse our guide to the best lesbian YA books or the full Book Reviews collection.
The Bottom Line
The Miseducation of Cameron Post sets out to tell the whole of a queer girlhood rather than just its crisis. Cameron is an extraordinary narrator, Miles City is vivid enough to smell, and the book treats even its antagonists with painful fairness. It is also long, slow through its first half, and content to stop rather than resolve. Whether that trade is worth it depends on whether you read for character or for plot — but for the reader who wants a queer coming-of-age that takes a teenage girl completely seriously, it remains one of the essentials. Check The Miseducation of Cameron Post on Amazon →
The Eikna Overall Ranking
On the Eikna scale, The Miseducation of Cameron Post ranks as a landmark queer YA literary novel — unmatched on voice and character, held back by length and an unresolved ending, and best approached for Cameron herself rather than for the romance or the camp.
The Evidence Scorecard
Overall ★★★★☆ 3.9/5
- ✓ 4.06 average across 61,067 Goodreads ratings
- ✓ Starred by Kirkus, Booklist, PW and SLJ
- ✓ Only 2% did-not-finish on StoryGraph
- ✓ Length is the most repeated complaint
Romance ★★★★☆ 3.6/5
- ✓ Cam and Coley’s pull feels real
- ✓ Secrecy gives it genuine tension
- ✓ Coley thread drives the middle
- ✓ A thread, not the destination
Characters ★★★★☆ 4.4/5
- ✓ 81% say strong character development
- ✓ Cameron is the most-praised element
- ✓ Aunt Ruth drawn with real fairness
- ✓ One reader questions Adam’s portrayal
Writing ★★★★☆ 4.3/5
- ✓ Four starred trade reviews for a debut
- ✓ Reads like adult literary fiction
- ✓ Montana rendered in vivid detail
- ✓ Too much description for some readers
Emotional Impact ★★★★☆ 4.4/5
- ✓ 89% of StoryGraph readers say emotional
- ✓ Grief and guilt land hard
- ✓ Kirkus praises its nuance on faith
- ✓ Slow middle dulls the build
Heat Level ★★★☆☆ 3/5
- ✓ Open door on romance.io
- ✓ Frank enough to draw objections
- ✓ StoryGraph tags it moderate
- ✓ Band rests on only 70 ratings
Ending ★★★☆☆ 3.4/5
- ✓ Hopeful rather than tragic
- ✓ Complete standalone, no sequel
- ✓ Some readers find it honest
- ✓ Many call it abrupt and unresolved
Re-read Value ★★★★☆ 3.9/5
- ✓ Voice rewards a second read
- ✓ Film makes a natural companion
- ✓ 14-hour audiobook as a second pass
- ✓ 470 pages discourage a quick return
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