Everything Leads to You by Nina LaCour

Nina LaCour is fast becoming one of my favourite contemporary authors. Her take on romance is really refreshing, and in my opinion she is such an important author in terms of LGBT stories. I fell in love with her writing in You Know Me Well, and the short story she penned for Perkin’s Summer Days & Summer Nights anthology.Everything Leads to You is no exception and I found myself falling into this story with ease.

At first the plot might seem a bit far-reaching: a young woman discovers that her long lost grandfather was actually a world famous western movie star who leaves her a small fortune upon his death. But seriously, that’s not all that this book is about. In fact, I would go as far to say that it’s not even a main focus. It’s really about the friendship between Emi and her best friend Charlotte, Emi’s personal journey with her career and past relationships, Ava’s own journey with finding out where she comes from, and of course, the inevitable romance.

There were so many great parts to this book. I particularly loved Emi’s narrative. There were lots of sentences without breaks, and her inner dialogue was energetic to suit her. It even had a sort of quirky and rambling quality, which I found as endearing as her character. I also thought theromances were very realistic and not at all sugar-coated.

Wanting someone is not the same as loving her…when you love someone, you are sure. You don’t need time to decide. You don’t stay stop and start over and over, like you’re playing some kind of sport. You know the immensity of what you have and you protect it.

Real and convincing romances like these are sometimes hard to come by in YA so I am always appreciative for LaCour’sdimensional and completely authentic characters and relationships.

There’s only one negative that I can think of but it’s barely one at all. When I finished this, I was thinking, man, I really want to know more about Emi’s background and her coming out experience. But then I remembered this passage:

People talk about coming out as though it’s this big one-time event. But really, most people have to come out over and over to basically every new person they meet. I’m only eighteen and already it exhausts me.

I realised that, yes, this book in centred on an LGBT romance but that’s not all that this book is about. It’s about finding out where you’re from, figuring out who you are, and deciding on what and who you want in life. This intertwined with the Los Angeles background and LaCour’s lovely prose makes this a really hard book not to love.