Erik J. Brown, Lose You to Find Me, Hachette Children’s Books, May 2023, 368 pp., RRP $19.99 (pbk), ISBN 9781444970029
Lose You to Find Me is going to find a place with fans of Heartstopper, and has all the LGBTQ teen drama and angst anyone could want.
Gabe was Tommy’s first serious crush, one summer at camp when he was eleven, and the one he measures all other potential relationships by, even if he hasn’t seen Gabe in years, so when Gabe shows up as the new employee at Tommy’s after school job, Tommy can see every rom com plot ever playing out to bring them back together.
But real life is nothing like a rom com, and Gabe doesn’t even seem to remember Tommy. Tommy is left dealing with rekindling a complicated friendship with Gabe, navigating his own assumptions about himself and the people around him, and their messy lives and dramas, and trying to keep it all from blowing up his dreams of culinary school.
Lose You to Find Me is definitely one for an older teenage and young adult audience of fifteen and up. It touches on sex, hook-ups, the brief consideration of abortion as an option after one of the characters has a pregnancy scare, and there is the potential trigger of various shades of emotionally abusive family and romantic relationships playing their part in the story. Any reader who is particularly sensitive to graphic bloodshed resulting from a kitchen accident may also want to tread carefully with one scene in the book.
The heart of Lose You to Find Me, however, is about re-evaluating preconceptions, and Tommy weaves his way through many assumptions, both big and small, about himself and the people he’s closest to.
Coming out is another thread that runs through the book, without ever becoming didactic, and several characters navigate the question of who they tell about their sexuality, and how. The fallout of those revelations covers a variety of responses.
The true delight of this book, however, was the warmth between Tommy and his friends, and the support they all give each other even as mistakes are made and owned. The events of the story really kick in around halfway through the book, revealing the layers and nuances in even the most minor characters, and giving the story its depth even as it picks up narrative steam. There is growth, and change, and a challenge to the reader’s assumptions and narrative expectations that left me with a sense of deep satisfaction as Tommy and his friends make their choices about their futures.
Reviewed by Emily Clarke