UGH! So honest and fierce and all around wonderful- Roxane Gay's two words of praise on the cover is not just hype, it's real. Do you ever connect with and so love a book that you just want to hug it? That's how I felt here.

The voice Gabby Rivera constructed in 19-year-old Juliet is everything and more. She's a writer, she's a little insecure, she approaches the world with wonder and is accepting of the kinds of lives she doesn't know because she's so down to learn what she doesn't know. She's cool and beautiful though she doesn't really acknowledge either. Her introspection is so gripping not just because of the detail of riding the 2 train into the North Bronx, or the discomfort and mild embarrassment of menstruating, or developing a crush on a motorcycle-riding librarian babe in real time, but her thoughts and descriptions are pure poetry, it was impossible to look away.

Juliet is a "baby gay" and proud, dating a politico-in-training. She loves her home in the Bronx and her college in Baltimore. She has a little brother, Lil Melvin, who is whip smart and inspires her to be her best self. Her parents and aunts in New York don't yet understand her being a lesbian, but she just came out before traveling to the other side of the country for an internship so the news is still settling in at the beginning of her story. She's rightfully frustrated with her mother but, per the advice of her girlfriend Lainie who is in DC for her own internship, is going to let go of her hostility while living more in the moment and experiencing everything that comes along with working for feminist author Harlowe Brisbane.

Juliet read Harlowe's book and it immediately changed her life and views on the power she has between her legs and how to best respect her womanhood and that of the other great women she so adores. She wrote, in awe, and three months later she had a secured work with her idol for the summer to get school credit. Living with Harlowe, Juliet is introduced to Harlowe's group of lesbian friends and is confronted with a complexity in relationships (and gender pronouns and identity in general) that Juliet had not yet encountered. Thankfully her cousin Ava, in Miami, prods Juliet to visit her but until then is available for relationship advice as well as any feminist guidance, as needed.

Once her aura has synched with the new environment in Portland (per Harlowe's instruction), Juliet is off to research badass females of history at the library for Harlowe's next book and there she is soon tempted with the gorgeous and intelligent Kira who offers Juliet cookies and rides home on the back of her motorcycle. While they build a friendship, she puts off Kira's pursuit for more despite Lainie's dodging her texts and calls and focuses on the plethora of women's history she has only just begun to uncover.

There is drama galore for Juliet and the Harlowe and the other Portland natives and the wonderful Juliet has the stamina to see and live it all, though she may not know it yet. It was a pleasure to call Juliet a friend for the short time I was with her in these pages (couldn't help but inhale all 300 pages in 2 days) and I will wait impatiently for the next novel from Rivera.