Right beside you

Tucker Shaw

Book - 2025

"High school has just ended and Eddie is at a loss for what's next. He had a falling out with his best friend, and he never really related to the rest of his peers in the sleepy Colorado town he callshome. The future is bleak--until his ancient and eccentric great aunt Cookie asks him to care for her in New York City as she recuperates from an illness. Eddie leaps at the opportunity. Soon after he arrives at her tiny Greenwich Village apartment, homebound Cookie asksEddie to use her vintage Polaroid camera to snap pictures of her favorite places she can no longer visit. But something's unusual aboutthis camera. When he takes a photo, he's launched back in time to an entirely different New York of the early 20th century&q...uot;--

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Review by Booklist Review

Released from the hospital, 18-year-old Eddie's great-great-aunt Cookie summons him to New York to take care of her. He finds the 99-year-old to be a latter-day Auntie Mame type, and when she sends Eddie on errands, she equips him with an ancient Polaroid camera to take pictures so she can see what's happening in the city she loves. One of these errands takes him to the fabled Algonquin Hotel, where he finds himself transported back in time to 1930. There, he discovers his waiter is the beautiful boy whose picture hangs on his bedroom wall and whom he will see several more times as he is again transported to the past--until the boy finally introduces himself as Francis. Eddie falls in love with him as he takes the boy to a gay speakeasy, a gay ball, and elsewhere in 1930. Meanwhile, in the present on another errand, Eddie meets a young baker, Theo, and finds himself attracted to him, too. Shaw's splendid novel offers long thoughts about time and the nature of reality as it tells a compelling love story that is beautifully written in the omniscient narrator's voice, which is used to speak directly to Eddie ("Don't fall in, Eddie. Don't panic"). Don't miss this lovely book.

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Kirkus Book Review

A queer teenager toggles between eras in this time-fluid love story. Eighteen-year-old Eddie is new to New York City. He's there tending to Cookie, his 99-year-old great-aunt who lives in Greenwich Village. Her home is an homage to the past: Photos from her youth adorn the walls, as well as portraits of glamorous movie stars, like Bette Davis and Tallulah Bankhead. Eddie's responsibilities include taking photos with Cookie's vintage Polaroid camera of her favorite haunts, picking up opera cakes and alstroemerias, and having a glass of sherry with Cookie at precisely 4:00 p.m. All of this is manageable. What's not manageable is Eddie's anxiety. As he explores the city, he meets Theo, the bakery apprentice who makes said opera cakes. But Eddie is unable to move forward with his feelings of attraction. He also meets Francis, a boy from the 1920s. As Eddie slips between then and now, he's able to fully be himself with Francis; their love story is sweet, hot, and revelatory. But is it real? Is Eddie's seeming ability to travel through time actually something else? This story is a love letter to New York, an exploration of identity, and the passing down of a legacy of queer stories from one generation to another. Eddie's visions are left open for readers' interpretation, but his search for where he belongs is very clear, resplendent in how vividly Shaw conveys it. Most characters are cued white. Deeply moving and thoroughly engrossing.(Fiction. 14-18) Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.