It Looks Like This [Hardcover]

In spare, understated prose heightened by a keen lyricism, a debut author will take your breath away.

A new state, a new city, a new high school. Mike’s father has already found a new evangelical church for the family to attend, even if Mike and his plainspoken little sister, Toby, don’t want to go. Dad wants Mike to ditch art for sports, to toughen up, but there’s something uneasy behind his demands. Then Mike meets Sean, the new kid, and “hey” becomes games of basketball, partnering on a French project, hanging out after school. A night at the beach. The fierce colors of sunrise. But Mike’s father is always watching. And so is Victor from school, cell phone in hand. In guarded, Carveresque prose that propels you forward with a sense of stomach-dropping inevitability, Rafi Mittlefehldt tells a wrenching tale of first love and loss that exposes the undercurrents of a tidy suburban world. Heartbreaking and ultimately life-affirming,It Looks Like Thisis a novel of love and family and forgiveness—not just of others, but of yourself.It Looks Like Thislooks to be the debut novel of the season. Mike and Sean’s discovery of their love for each other is told with such exquisite tenderness, I could not put the book down, even when I knew that something dreadful was going to happen. Despite many obstacles, Mike comes into his own with the help of understanding friends, a few kind adults, a faithful dog, and Toby, the greatest little sister since Phoebe Caulfield. This is an extremely powerful book.
—Lesléa Newman, author of October Mourning: A Song for Matthew Shepard

It Looks Like Thisperfectly captures the buzzing static that hits your brain the second you realize you’re not the person your parents expect you to be. A painful, poignant story about choosing compassion over anger.
—Maggie Thrash, author-illustrator of Honor Girl, a Los Angeles Times Book Prl!