Bi Book Club: Margo Zimmerman Gets the Girl

Sara Waxelbaum and Brianna R. Shrum’s 2023 YA romance, Margo Zimmerman Gets the Girl, intertwines three beloved tropes: friends to lovers, fish out of water, and will they, won’t they. The story centers around Margo Zimmerman, a high school senior who discovers she’s a lesbian after an eye-opening kiss during a game of spin the bottle. Navigating the uncharted waters of her newfound identity, Margo turns to Abbie Sokoloff, an openly bi senior and swimmer, for guidance. Together, they deal with the ups and downs of self-discovery and a budding relationship, capturing the essence of teenage romance.

Though Abbie and Margo are nothing more than acquaintances at the start of the novel, Abbie surprisingly agrees to instruct Margo in Queer 101. In exchange, she asks Margo to tutor her in AP History. The course has dragged down Abbie’s GPA enough that her prospective university, Florida International University, is threatening to rescind its offer of admission. Because she’s afraid that losing this acceptance will leave her stuck with her neglectful parents after high school, trading Queer 101 for AP History sounds like the perfect exchange to Abbie.

But nothing is ever that simple, as both characters learn. Margo Zimmerman Gets the Girl alternates between Abbie and Margo’s points of view, calling to mind similar novels such as Jennifer Dugan’s 2021 YA romance Some Girls Do. Through POV swaps, readers see that, while Margo and Abbie’s friendship begins as something of a business transaction, it blossoms into more as they take Queer 101 field trips together and visit each other’s houses. Margo begins to wonder if she really wants the girl, not just any girl, and Abbie’s insistence that Margo isn’t her type rings more and more false. Their budding chemistry, however, is complicated by their very different social cliques, and their friends’ varying levels of support.

In terms of bi representation, Abbie is out from the start of the book. She’s confident in her bisexuality and, over the years, has dated and/or hooked up with women, enbies, and men. Some of Abbie’s character arc deals with biphobia, and the novel directly addresses these topics, with Abbie noting in one chapter, “The amount of baggage that exists in the queer community about bisexuals is exhausting.” She lists the usual reductive tropes — greedy, slutty, indecisive — and ends the paragraph with her fear that being bi makes her less queer.

This, of course, isn’t true. Instead, her fears are unfortunately confirmed by her best friend Charlie, another senior and a lesbian who isn’t so supportive of Abbie’s bisexuality. Conversations between Abbie and Charlie are, at times, rife with biphobic tension — and while Abbie is loath to lose her best friend, the novel asks its readers to question what sort of treatment we are, and are not, willing to accept from our inner circle. How do we handle someone who is kind and supportive only in some areas of our lives? Where do we draw lines and set boundaries? I won’t spoil what happens, but I will say that it’s an important part of Abbie’s arc.

In addition to grappling with questions of friendship and biphobia, Margo Zimmerman Gets the Girl also addresses bi erasure, or the assumption that someone is either gay or straight based on their current or known partner(s). Overall, Abbie is more vocal about her female partners, leading one character to erroneously assume Abbie is a lesbian. Though the term bi erasure doesn’t come up explicitly, the novel does spotlight the pressure Abbie feels as a bi woman: “There’s no right or good way to be bi and it’s just pretty exhausting.”

It’s a short line in a longer paragraph about biphobia and bi erasure, but it’s an important one for both character development and real-life readers. Again, I won’t spoil the full conversation, but the authors deftly handle a topic that’s often as invisible as bi folks themselves. Waxelbaum and Shrum affirm Abbie’s bisexuality and remind their readers that no matter who Abbie dates, or which gender she talks about the most, Abbie is still bi.

As someone who came out a little later in life, I appreciated it for both its simplicity and its confidence. For me, it dovetailed really well with Margo’s coming out story, which is in some ways a more stereotypical queer experience; pairing Margo’s uncertainty with Abbie’s confidence allows the novel to reflect multiple queer experiences — and potentially draw in more readers, who may see themselves reflected in one lead character more than the other.

In terms of larger representation, Margo Zimmerman Gets the Girl features a number of queer characters. Of them, bi and pan characters specifically include Margo’s older brother Mendel, who’s pan, and Julie D’Aubigny, a bi historical figure about whom Margo writes in a Queer 101 essay. The novel also addresses lesbian stereotypes throughout.

On this subject, it’s also worth noting that the novel represents other forms of diversity as well, particularly neurodivergence. Both autism and ADHD feature in this novel — “Thanks, autism brain!” Margo says to herself in Chapter 17 — something that’s unfortunately still rare, according to the website LGBTQ Reads dedicated to promoting queer reading material. They’ve compiled a list of books with disability/neurodivergent queer representation. (And yes, it includes Margo!)

Overall, Margo Zimmerman Gets the Girl is a YA rom-com full of witty banter, earnest awkwardness, and a whole lot of personal growth. Though it can feel a bit one-dimensional at times, the novel doesn’t shy away from heavy material, and what Abbie shares in Queer 101 might be of interest to those who, like Margo, are new to the queer community and looking for a place to start.