Book Description 

Wyatt is fifteen, and nobody in his homophobic small town of Lincolnville, Oregon, knows that he’s gay. Not even his best friend (and accidental girlfriend) Mackenzie.

Then he discovers a secret from actual history: Abraham Lincoln was in love with another guy! Since everyone loves Lincoln, Wyatt’s sure that if the world knew about it, they would treat gay people differently and it would solve everything about his life. So Wyatt outs Lincoln online, triggering a media firestorm and conservative backlash that threaten to destroy everything he cares about.

Now Wyatt has to pretend more than ever that he’s straight (because no one will believe a gay kid saying Lincoln was gay). Only then he meets Martin, who is openly gay and who just might be the guy Wyatt’s been hoping to find. Will Wyatt stay closeted to change the world, or will he let Abraham Lincoln’s gay romance fade back into history and take his own chance at love?

This nineteenth- and twenty-first-century coming-of-age, coming out story was inspired by real historical evidence that Abraham Lincoln was in love—romantic love—with another man. QUEER AS A FIVE-DOLLAR BILL asks LGBTQ teens (and everyone else), What if you knew a secret from history that could change the world?

My Review 

One of my goals this year is to catch up on my backlog of ARCs. I’m hoping to get caught up by the end of the summer and to not let the books go unreviewed again in the future. 

This is a sweet and tender queer YA novel about a young man who is the only gay person in his small conservative Oregon town. When Wyatt finds historical evidence that Abraham Lincoln had a roommate who might have been more than a roommate, his first inclination is to share the news. Unfortunately, that doesn’t go over very well in his Lincoln-obsessed town and he ends up even more ostracized than he already was.

But then he meets Martin, who is sophisticated and from the city. Martin knows all about advocacy, and this book is about so much more than a small town boy meeting a city boy. 

I liked this book a lot, and I wish I had read it sooner because it really is quite charming. I especially enjoyed the little Easter egg with the zip code. Incidentally, I knew about Lincoln’s roommate from a historical fiction novel, so it was very satisfying to see Wyatt learn about Lincoln and Speed. 

I would absolutely recommend Queer as a Five Dollar Bill. I am definitely going to keep my eye out for more books from Wind in the future.  

I received a digital ARC of this book from the publisher/NetGalley.