“Been Here All Along,” written by Sandy Hall, is one book that I had no expectations for. With books centered around LGBT characters, I try to not put a lot of pressure on the writer to make the book so spectacular because not everyone knows how to portray LGBT people in literature correctly, unlike the centuries of practice writing straight people.

The characters are slightly too underdeveloped for my taste and didn’t spark anything in me. Gideon, one of the third-person narrators in the story, realizes out that he is gay for his best friend Kyle. Kyle, who is bisexual himself, has a girlfriend but later discovers that he has romantic feelings for Gideon. There was nothing very ground-breaking for me during the chapters where these events occurred. The writing was almost too casual for me to get into the book.

Ruby, Kyle’s girlfriend, does not make sense to me. She has enough potential to be made into something more like an antagonist. Instead, she bounces back and forth between being nice and being spiteful towards Gideon for stealing her boyfriend, which was not what happened. It was not my cup of tea.

The conflict in the story was minimal, but it was well-written enough for me to want to read until the end

I give this book three out of five stars.