This is a must read for anyone especially if you're a member of the LGBTQIA community or an ally but this is of course, a brilliant read for anyone who enjoys a good story and is interested in a little bit of British LGBTQIA history in regards to the appalling Clause/Section 28 of 1988.

(More information on the act is here. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_28)

This book appealed to me straight away because I've been a member of the LGBTQIA community since I was a teenager and realised I was bisexual and then as a parent to two transgender children and as nonbinary person. Books like The Fight That Makes Us are a necessity for representation and understanding of who and what we are and where we came from. 

The battles that faced many members of the community in Britain during the eighties were horrendous and came at them from all sides. This was the era of headlines filled with lies and stigma as the AIDs virus spread and many men lost their lives. Hatred was rife and cruelty was on every corner, and Sarah Hagger-Holt has shown the difficulties and the fury that was rife; and sadly, that same hate is back now in 2023.

The Fight That Makes Us is about family and of not letting problems and trouble tear you away from your loved ones. 

I like how it's two generations of the same family, who are members of the community and have experienced similar situations and doubts about who they are and how they belong. The author writes their lives with kindness and compassion because Hod knows, it's one of the hardest realisations to accept that you're different to the vast amount of people you know along with understanding so many people fear you for no reason whatsoever.

The Fight That Makes Us is fiction but the cruelty of Section 28 was real and now people like Jesse, my children and myself are suffering that same hatred, cruelty and misunderstanding along with vilification that is faced within the book and in the eighties.

I hope this book educates those who don't understand and offers support to those who feel alone and afraid. Above all, we're all human, and we all deserve to be treated properly and, above all, with respect.