Review by Booklist Review
Burke's engrossing debut follows a woman reckoning with friendship, love, grief, and identity. Edith left Boston six years ago, along with her life as a seemingly straight cis boy. Back then, nothing mattered more to her than her friends, Tessa and Val, until their complex tangle of relationships drove them apart. Now Edith is a mildly successful novelist struggling to write her second book, living in Texas as the government attacks the rights of the trans community. Her friend Adam invites her to Boston for a reading, but coming back means seeing her now-ex, Tessa, for the first time since Edith's transition and Val's death. "No one loves you like the people who knew you when you were young," she knows, but often those friendships are more complicated because of their depth. Getting by via Sondheim, Gossip Girl rewatches, and the pursuit of obliteration through sex, Edith must come to terms with her past and determine her future. Burke deftly chronicles the nuances of queer love and friendship in this perceptive portrait of three women.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
A writer's lost loves resurface during a trip down memory lane in Burke's piercing debut. Edith McAllister, a writer and trans woman, visits Boston from Texas to give a guest reading and lecture at her college friend Adam's undergraduate class. The visit also marks her first reunion with her old college friends since her transition, including her ex-girlfriend, Tessa, with whom she once shared a best friend, Valerie, who was Edith's sometimes lover and who died 17 months earlier in a car crash. When Edith learns Tessa is engaged to a cis man, it sends her into a spiral. Back in Texas, she can't focus on her own life, despite the looming deadline for her second book and her need to find a new apartment. Burke alternates Edith's crisis with chapters devoted to her college years, offering a peek into the depth of her messy relationships with Tessa and Valerie. The characters are brought to life with brash and snappy dialogue ("Can you believe I'm nobody's wife? Look at how fucking domesticated I am," says an apron-wearing Valerie). Readers will devour this visceral story of desire, love, and self-discovery. (Sept.)
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
A transgender woman struggles to write about her tangled relationship with two women--one living and one dead--in this keenly observed debut. Edith met Tessa and Valerie in Boston during college, before she knew she was a girl. Tessa identified as a lesbian and Valerie was a transgender girl from Texas who began her transition at 18. Both embraced the ostensibly straight, cisgender male Edith as a friend, while Edith harbored a secret crush on Tessa that she believed would not and could not result in anything real. But as is so often the case, identities, desires, and priorities shifted as the trio moved toward adulthood. Now, six years after Edith left the East Coast for graduate school, she's living in Austin, largely estranged from Tessa, and Valerie is gone, having died in a car crash. Edith's abiding love for Stephen Sondheim's work--particularlyMerrily We Roll Along andInto the Woods--brings questions about cause and effect and the value of wishes to the forefront of her mind. When a trip back to Boston, the deadline for a draft of her second novel, and the decision whether or not to stay in an increasingly transphobic Texas all converge, Edith must make sense of both her past and her future. Burke builds a captivating cast of funny, complicated people and deftly captures the warm and sometimes irksome elasticity of queer friendship. Her deceptively simple prose brings the bigness of life down to earth without trivializing. ("What was six years? A graduate degree, a tumultuous romance, the death of your closest friend. You became a girl and so what? Time kept passing. There was so much, too much, life left.") Any reader who is on the precipice of change or feels like the universe might occasionally be playing a trick on them will find this novel deeply resonant. Wry and intimate and real, this character study is worth lingering over. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
