Over the last week, my lunch reading consisted of David Levithan’s September 2023 publication Ryan and Avery. Reading the book during lunch was even more delicious than whatever I had brought for lunch that day including a homemade tiramisu cupcake today when I finished it.

The book is a testament to gentle books everywhere. The books that aren’t niche reads for specific teen readers but for the average teen reader but approached with a tenderness that can still be appreciated by teens, allowing them to slow down and feel things. Currently my teens would rather be reading bloody slasher stories and heart-pounding mysteries, but they would make room for this one. Like they would for a similar book, Reggie and Delilah’s Year of Falling by Elise Bryant.

From the start, meeting Ryan and Avery, one gay teen boy and one teen trans boy, with their colorful coifs, was like meeting them in person. They have their obstacles to overcome but nothing is as sweet as their dates. Chapters are told based on the date but in a nonlinear fashion allowing readers to connect the dots about their relationship because life gets in the way. And by life, I mean bullies, unsympathetic parents, play practice, and their pasts.

Yet the comfort and joy they find in one another is stunningly realistic. The warmth they emit from how they think about one another to how they dress for a date give ME the butterflies of going on a first or second or third date.

Books move us. You’d be a cold-hearted unempathetic heathen to not feel something reading this book.