Like a Love Story

Stonewall Honor Book * A Time Magazine Best YA Book of All Time

"A book for warriors, divas, artists, queens, individuals, activists, trend setters, and anyone searching for the courage to be themselves.”—Mackenzi Lee, New York Times bestselling author of The Gentleman’s Guide to Vice and Virtue

It’s 1989 in New York City, and for three teens, the world is changing.

Reza is an Iranian boy who has just moved to the city with his mother to live with his stepfather and stepbrother. He’s terrified that someone will guess the truth he can barely acknowledge about himself. Reza knows he’s gay, but all he knows of gay life are the media’s images of men dying of AIDS.

Judy is an aspiring fashion designer who worships her uncle Stephen, a gay man with AIDS who devotes his time to activism as a member of ACT UP. Judy has never imagined finding romance...until she falls for Reza and they start dating.

Art is Judy’s best friend, their school’s only out and proud teen. He’ll never be who his conservative parents want him to be, so he rebels by documenting the AIDS crisis through his photographs.

As Reza and Art grow closer, Reza struggles to find a way out of his deception that won’t break Judy’s heart—and destroy the most meaningful friendship he’s ever known.

This is a bighearted, sprawling epic about friendship and love and the revolutionary act of living life to the fullest in the face of impossible odds.

Abdi Nazemian is the author of Only This Beautiful Moment―winner of the Stonewall Award and the Lambda Literary Award―and Like a Love Story, a Stonewall Honor Book and one of Time’s 100 Best YA Books of All Time. He is also the author of the young adult novels Exquisite Things, Desert Echoes, The Chandler Legacies, and The Authentics, and the co-author of SwapLife. His novel The Walk-In Closet won the Lambda Literary Award for LGBT Debut Fiction. His screenwriting credits include the films The Artist’s Wife, The Quiet, and numerous television series including It's Not Like That and Sweet Magnolias. His many credits as a film producer include Call Me by Your Name and Little Woods. He lives in Los Angeles with his husband, their two children, and their dog, Disco.