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How to Love You When You're Gone

by Gabriela Gonzales

First love alongside family change and loss

Regular price $13.38 USD
Regular price $22.30 USD Sale price $13.38 USD
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AlbakiReads Editorial

First love alongside family change and loss

High school seniors Mayte and Auggie meet through a disastrous blind date, then find themselves thrown together again as their social circles merge. Mayte is balancing her grandmother’s cancer, a newly changed household, and the expectation that family comes before college. Auggie, meanwhile, hopes to attend a creative writing program but is struggling with his application story. As their initial dislike gives way to feelings, Auggie considers writing about Mayte’s experience of loss, raising questions about his motives and the boundaries of friendship. The novel brings contemporary romance into conversation with caregiving, grief, family responsibility, and the ethics of turning someone else’s life into a story.

Good fit for readers who enjoy

  • Teen and young adult readers interested in contemporary romance.
  • Readers seeking fiction about first love alongside grief and family responsibilities.
  • Readers interested in writing ambitions and the complications of friendship.

Themes

First loveGrief and lossFamily responsibilityCreative writing and ethical boundaries

Based on publisher information and book metadata.

Book overview

For fans of Ann Liang and Lynn Painter, this humorous, relatable novel gives an honest look at what it's like to fall in love for the first time--while simultaneously healing from loss.

High school senior Mayte has never been kissed, but it hardly matters. Her abuelita has cancer, her half sister with special needs has moved in, and college is off the table--family comes first. She keeps her problems to herself. Why burden everyone she loves with more?

Meanwhile, fellow senior Auggie is set on attending an elite creative writing program. But as the self-proclaimed most boring person alive, he can't exactly write the next great American novel when he's struggling to write a short story for college applications.

After an awful blind date ("disaster" doesn't even begin to describe it), Mayte and Auggie never want to see each other again. When forced together by their merging social circles, the pair must at least pretend to get along...but soon they develop actual feelings. Then tragedy strikes Mayte's family. Auggie feels compelled to write her story to help her process and heal--but are his intentions truly selfless? The best story he's ever written could impact the best friendships he's ever had.

How to Love You When You're Gone is equal parts heartbreaking, soul-healing, and absolutely hilarious from the very first page.
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