Books like How to Be Remy Cameron

Absolutely fantastic. Longer review to come later.Update on 9/25/19:How to Be Remy Cameron is a delightful and insightful book about identity and romance and that push you often get when you're in your late teens to figure out the rest of your life right that second. Julian's first book Running With Lions was a delightful, if simplistic, book with an enemies-to-lovers m/m romance that also explored sports and male friendship without toxic masculinity. This sophomore novel truly shows how much Julian has already grown as an author. The voice is remarkable and earnest, and rings so true as a kid just trying to figure out who he is while also clearly crushing on a guy. There were so many moments where the writing took me off guard with its insightfulness and just with the lovely descriptions. Every single character is fascinating and fully captured, creating this tapestry of diverse teens of today that made my heart glow just a little bit.Remy, in particular, is an awkward kid. He's gay, he's black, he's adopted, he has no idea how to describe himself beyond these labels that he worries might define him. He's also a passionate writer, a music lover, a good friend, and a great older brother. This is a contemporary that manages, somehow, to fully balance so many aspects of Remy's journey. His crush on a guy is interspersed perfectly, the sort of underlying anxiety about his upcoming essay due date pops up every time you almost forget about it, the balance of different friendships is excellent, and even Remy's family is fully realized and characterized, leaving space for his younger sister and both of his parents to be their own people. And that still isn't everything that this book manages to do.It's rare to see an author grow so incredibly much from one book to the next, but with the leaps and bounds of complexity that this added to Julian's previous work I cannot wait to see what he writes next.