This Is Kind of an Epic Love Story

Narrator Ron Butler takes us into the mind of 16-year-old Nate Bird. Nate's still hung up on Florence, his best friend and former girlfriend. When his childhood friend Oliver James moves back to the neighborhood, Nate's feelings become even more confused. Ollie, who is deaf, communicates with Nate through a combination of speech/lip reading, sign language, and typing on their phones, and Butler uses an effective halting delivery to convey when they're reading that text. Butler gives slight accents to Ollie and his mother, Mrs. Hern�ndez, and uses subtle variations in tone to differentiate among Nate's diverse group of friends. His sympathetic narration carries listeners along as Nate tries to figure out what, and who, he's willing to take a chance on. J.M.D. � AudioFile 2018, Portland, Maine

Starred review from August 15, 2018
Love and second chances are the themes of this engrossing young adult novel.After being cheated on by his girlfriend, Florence, and watching his mother struggle to accept his father's death, Nathan is not sure that he believes in love anymore. When Oliver, Nate's former best friend, moves back to Seattle and enrolls in his high school, the stage may finally be set for Nate to heal his broken heart. In their debut young adult novel, Callender (Hurricane Child, 2018) assembles a delightful cast of teenage characters who feel so authentic that readers will be scanning their school cafeterias for them. The author has a talent for capturing the earnest-yet-awkward cadence of teenspeak, and they explore the humor and pathos of adolescent relationships in a way that demonstrates a deep respect for the teen audience. While the central love pair is nicely rendered, starting with their meet-cute, Nate's relationships with his mother and with Flo--for whom he still holds a torch--are equally complex. His guilt over his inability to comfort his mom and the awkwardness both he and Flo feel about forging a solid friendship despite their rocky past are eminently relatable. Best of all, Nate, Flo, and Ollie's sexualities are fluid and a nonissue within their familial and social circles. Nate is brown-skinned, Oliver is Latinx, and Florence is biracial (black and Taiwanese).A delightful testimony to the enduring power of love. (Fiction. 14-18)

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September 15, 2018
Grades 9-12 Nathan Bird is in a bad place. Though he still loves her, his girlfriend, Flo, has left him for another girl. As if this weren't bad enough, Oliver James Hernandez, his childhood best friend whom he hasn't seen since they were 11, returns to Seattle from Santa Fe. Good news? Not really, as their friendship ended badly when Nate kissed Ollie, who fled. Nate quickly proves why he calls himself the King of Awkward, while agonizing over how to react to a teenage Ollie. Gradually, the two boys effect a rapprochement that begins to turn into something more as Nate realizes he's falling in love with Ollie. But can they have a relationship? Or will Ollie leave him again? Nate dithers endlessly about this until readers want to scream. Will the two boys ever get together? Well, perhaps. Though not as epic as the title promises, and as filled with frustration as it is, the love story is ultimately sweet enough to satisfy fans of LGBTQ romance. Perhaps there really are happy endings.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)