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An utterly charming and modern debut novel spanning ten years of extraordinary friendship, about soulmates, unconventional families, and the limitless, ever-changing forms love can take.
When Mae and Ari meet outside a crowded gay bar during their final year of university, their connection is instant, sparking a lifetime friendship. Stubborn and no stranger to breaking hearts, Mae needs Ari's bright light to guide her out of her self-centered ways. Reeling from a scandal in New York, vibrant, charming Ari sees Mae as an anchor keeping him grounded.
Though they are young, ambitious, and queer, both Mae and Ari secretly daydream about settling down somewhere with a garden, children, and dogs, building a life that feels like home. They make a pact: somehow, some day, they will have a child together.
In the decades that follow, Ari and Mae realize that fulfilling their promise will not be as simple as they once hoped. Navigating toxic partners and hidden secrets, combatting the heavy weight of grief, and relishing the spoils of flashy media careers, the two struggle to reconcile their ever-diverging paths. Although nothing goes quite to plan, Ari and Mae—alongside their dearest friends and lovers—come to realize that the messy, devoted, tight-knit family they could build together might be better than anything they could have ever imagined.
Page-turning, emotionally evocative, and bursting with wit and charm, This Love is a testament to the power of friendship and a love letter to family—however it's formed.
"[A] heartfelt examination of found family." —Booklist (starred review)
"The writing can be clunky, especially the dialogue...Fortunately, Jeffs adeptly develops the characters through their flaws and transformations. Patient readers will be rewarded." —Publishers Weekly
"Reminiscent of Patti Smith and Robert Mapplethorpe, Mae and Ari have an immediate and incandescent connection that defies categorization. It's a sincere pleasure to watch this richly rendered, embodied, and deeply queer cast of characters crash headlong into each other and be transformed." —Emma Copley Eisenberg, author of Housemates and The Third Rainbow Girl
"Lyrical, meandering, and astute, This Love is a love letter to what friendship can be, and what a novel can do." —Chloé Caldwell, author of Women
"A beautifully wrought, tender, funny, and wholly original story about the magic that happens when friends become family. I was totally immersed in the characters and their world, and started missing them the moment I finished reading." —Gabrielle Korn, author of Yours for the Taking and The Shutouts
This information about This Love was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Lotte Jeffs (she/they) is an award-winning writer and the author of the acclaimed non-fiction books How To Be a Gentlewoman and The Queer Parent, and a children's picture book My Magic Family. She writes for the Times, the Sunday Times, the Guardian, and numerous other publications, and was previously the acting Editor-in-Chief of Elle. Lotte also co-hosts the podcast Gay to Ze, which celebrates queer parenting, and lives in London.
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