Everything Leads to You by Nina LaCour

(4/5 stars)

A love letter to the craft and romance of film and fate in front of—and behind—the camera from the award-winning author ofHold Still.
 
A wunderkind young set designer, Emi has already started to find her way in the competitive Hollywood film world.
 
Emi is a film buff and a true romantic, but her real-life relationships are a mess. She has desperately gone back to the same girl too many times to mention. But then a mysterious letter from a silver screen legend leads Emi to Ava. Ava is unlike anyone Emi has ever met. She has a tumultuous, not-so-glamorous past, and lives an unconventional life. She’s enigmatic…. She’s beautiful. And she is about to expand Emi’s understanding of family, acceptance, and true romance.

What I liked: This book blew me away. It does what you want books about LGBTQIA to do: it shows it as normal. There are no stereotypes, there is not an obnoxious emphasis that screams "I'm so progressive because my book is about a lesbian". This book is just real, Emi is real, Ava is real, they're all so real. The relationship between Emi and Ava is so well written. You can feel the attraction, growth, and love without having to see scenes of anything physical. They understand each other and when they do finally get together (is that even a spoiler? Because you totally knew it was going to happen), it's everything you wanted it to be. Fireworks and bells. I'm also really obsessed with the secondary characters. I love them all. I even love Morgan, especially since the whole breakup (for the most part) is handled maturely and professionally. I loved the cinematic references--like David Lynch's Mulholland Dr. (that was my first clue I was going to like this book)-- and the inside glimpses of the movie making business was interesting to read about. Lastly, I was a big fan of the whole 'collapse of the fantasy'. To me, it's like part of the definition of being human. We build up scenes and fantasies in our head and eventually we have to wake up and see life how it really is. Beautiful metaphor.

What I didn't like: It took me a long time to decide whether or not I liked Emi, which was weird because I loved every other character from the start. She seemed a tiny bit pretentious and for most of the book, she was forcing Ava to be her manic pixie dream girl. It was only until she shattered (and I mean straight up destroyed) the idea of the manic pixie dream girl that I realized I was finally starting to like her. And maybe that was the intent of her character the whole time. It probably was. But I was slow to jump on the Emi train, and that affected my reading of the book in the beginning.

Read this book. It's beautiful and diverse and different from other contemporaries, and I promise you'll get something out of it.

-Annie