Jun
7
7:00pm
YA Pride 2025
By Books of Wonder
Stories To Celebrate!
Commemorate Pride with these incredible reads from queer authors! Tune in on Crowdcast to hear from the amazing DEAN ATTA, author of I Can't Even Think Straight, and the brilliant CASS BIEHN, author of Vesuvius. Whether you're looking for a contemporary coming-of-age tale, or a meet-cute set in ancient Rome, these books have something for everyone!
I Can't Even Think Straight by DEAN ATTA
From the Stonewall Award–winning author of The Black Flamingo comes a new novel in verse, in which a biracial young man confronts issues of race, class, and sexuality.
Kai knows who he is to others: the reliable grandson, the best friend, the romantic backup. But he doesn’t quite know who he is to himself.
Though Kai desperately wants to come out at school, he keeps himself closeted. His best school friend, Matt, who is also queer, is afraid of getting kicked out by his religious parents if they knew—so he stays closeted and asks Kai to do the same. Kai unhappily goes along with it, but when a rumor goes around that Kai and Matt are together, Matt starts acting differently toward Kai anyway.
Kai’s other best friend, Vass, is nonbinary and doesn’t care who knows it. Vass feels that Matt is a negative influence, putting a damper on Kai’s identity—but maybe that’s just Vass’s crush on Kai talking. Caught between his best friends, Kai turns to writing to express his emotions. But when he explodes, he puts everything at risk.
Vesuvius by CASS BIEHN
An exploration of ambition and class, autonomy and religion, survival and love, Vesuvius combines the romantic angst of They Both Die at the End and the blended magic and history of The Song of Achilles to show readers that it is never too late to change your fate—or change the world.
Clever thief Felix slips from city to city to survive the present and escape a past he can’t remember. When Felix steals a divine artifact—Mercury's helmet—from a temple in Pompeii, pieces of his forgotten past begin to surface.
Loren, an ambitious temple attendant, has seen Felix in his apocalyptic nightmares for years. The last thing Loren expects is for his dream to stumble headfirst through his temple doors, moments after an earthquake rocks the city.
When Felix shows Loren the helmet, Loren sees the world coming to an end. He knows they have mere days to uncover Felix’s ties to the relic and to Loren’s visions if they have any hope of saving the city. But Ancient Rome is ruled by bloody politics and unstoppable destinies, and now that Loren and Felix are intertwined, their lives aren’t all they risk losing. When all has turned to ash and rubble, the boys will have to piece together their fates to make it out of a burning city alive.
Saturday, June 7th at 3pm
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