Like a Love Story

"Like a Love Story" is a heartfelt, powerful novel set in 1989 New York City, a time when the AIDS crisis loomed large over the gay community. The story follows three teens—Reza, Judy, and Art—as they navigate friendship, love, and identity. Reza, an Iranian boy new to the city, struggles with accepting his sexuality amidst the fear and stigma surrounding AIDS. He befriends Judy, an aspiring fashion designer, and her best friend Art, an out-and-proud activist and photographer.

As a gay man who came out in the late '90s, I was "fortunate" to have missed the peak of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, but the shadow of it still lingered. Sex and intimacy came with a scary asterisk, I lost friends to HIV complications, and the stigma and occasional violence toward LGBTQ+ people were still very real. Reading this book brought back a flood of memories—both good and bad. It reminded me of the fear, the courage, and the resilience of those who lived through that time. But more personally, it was a reflection of my own journey, a reminder of how far I’ve come from my scared, young self trying to find his place in the world.

Nazemian captures the rawness of that era with honesty and tenderness. The characters felt authentic, and their struggles were relatable. That said, I did find that the narrative voices of Reza, Judy, and Art lacked distinction. While the point of view shifted from chapter to chapter, their voices felt too similar. There were also some pacing issues: certain parts of the story felt rushed or overstated. But then again, it’s a story about teenagers, and their emotions are often "over the top."

One passage that stood out to me was: "You are not alone and never will be, because you have a beautiful, constantly evolving history full of ghosts who are watching over you, who are proud of you... Tell your story until it becomes woven into the fabric of our story. Write about the joys and the pain and every event and every artist who inspires you to dream. Tell your story, because if you don't, it could be wiped out. No one tells our stories for us."

This resonated deeply, both as a reminder of the importance of sharing our stories and as a tribute to the generations who came before us.

LIKE A LOVE STORY is about three teens trying to hang on to friendship and find love during the AIDS crisis, finding space for joy when the world wants so much for them to die. It's a messy story about imperfect people living through an especially terrible time to be gay*.

*I said "gay" not "queer" because the book seems to only know about gay men, more on that later.

I kept feeling jostled, uncomfortable when reading this, but mostly in a good way. The three MCs have very different perspectives, different assumptions about each other. One MC is fat and unabashedly loves food but deals with a lot of fatphobia and insecurity about how other people see her. I wish she'd had moments of food joy which weren't tainted by someone judging her in the moment, or her worrying about what other people were thinking. The gay and out MC deals with homophobia towards his gay identity and with the specter of what people around him think AIDS could mean, as well as what it actually means for his older gay friends who are dying of it. The gay and closeted MC (who is Persian) deals with racism and microaggressions about his background, and has internalized homophobia which means he’s both being hurt by other people’s homophobic reactions to the idea of gayness and turning that around into homophobic reactions towards other people because he doesn’t know what else to do. It makes for an emotionally complex but also sometimes exhausting read, as the white characters are racist, the straight characters are homophobic, and the thin characters are fatphobic. It’s set up to have no one be perfect, but it also means that early on there aren’t many emotional respites from the bigotry, though this did improve as the narrative progressed. 

The AIDS crisis and the gay men dying from AIDS are a prominent feature of the story, along with homophobic reactions to AIDS and the idea of it. The closeted MC is assumed to be straight when he’s actually gay, and no one considers for even a second the possibility that he could be bi (as far as I'm aware, "bi" was a label in use during the late eighties/early nineties but "pan" wasn't yet), anything that would make it feel like he has choices beyond “be in the closet and date the girl” or “be out and date the guy”. I don’t mean that he had to actually be bi or pan, just that no characters even consider that as a possibility. The idea that he could like both of the other MCs doesn’t occur to anyone, and it means his desire for other people is treated as the coveted object in a zero-sum game. I know this is set before the split attraction model was codified, but still, it’s so frustrating to see him do everything but scream “I’m homosexual and biromantic” and get rejected for so long for not being heterosexual (by the girl) and for not being strictly homoromantic (by the guy). My frustrations with the book were mostly about what wasn't quite in it but was a breath away, like the stark absence of queer women (who were also dying of AIDS in real life). There were two mentions of queer women in the entire book and neither of them seemed to acknowledge that AIDS affected them too. This didn't need to be everything, but since a lot of the narration made room for PSAs seemingly designed to make sure that it conveys a lot of the history of this very real epidemic which was ignored and mocked at the time, it stings to feel bi/pan erasure when reading. It also struggled in its handling of the fat character. She's... body-neutral, I guess? Her fatness seemed to exist mostly to have her have a "flaw" that isn't a flaw, just like being gay or being Iranian aren't flaws, but they can draw the ire of bigots when in homophobic and xenophobic settings.

I liked the second half better, maybe I just got used to the characters or maybe they'd gotten the frustrating love triangle stuff handled enough to let the story breathe a little more, since I'm not a huge fan of love triangles, especially ones built on miscommunications and lies. I cared a lot more about the way the friendships bend and whether or not they break. The epilogue was sad and jarring, I'm glad to know how the characters end up, but it was an appropriately bittersweet way to end this sad and hopeful story about people just trying to live and love.

The most important four-letter word in our history will always be LOVE. That's what we are fighting for. That's who we are. Love is our legacy. 

Wow! This book was an incredibly emotional journey that encompassed everything I love about contemporary YA. Or, in this case, kinda contemporary? Near-contemporary? I just can't bring myself to feel that 1980s were long ago enough to call a novel set in late 1980s historical. Which may have something to do with my age. Let's not dwell on it.

The story is set at the height of the AIDS crisis, and AIDS plays a big part in it. It influences how the characters interpret the world around them and their own relationships. There's an important side character serving as a mentor to the teen MCs who's dying from AIDS. And with all that, this is quite probably the most life-affirming book I've read in a while. It feels like every page is urging the reader to live, to walk forward, to make connections, to make history. It's a celebration of youth, queerness, self-discovery, of choosing life and love, no matter the circumstances.

Beyond that, it's simply a beautiful coming-of-age story focusing on all the important things: messy crushes, complicated friendships, redefining relationships with parents as kids grow older, and most of all, figuring out who you are. I'm incredibly happy to have stumbled upon this book, and I'm looking forward to reading the author's other works!

 Read for the following September 2020 readathons:
- Monsterathon: BIPOC Author
- Coffee Readathon: Middle Eastern Author