Survival was never the end of the story.
Seventeen-year-old Logan Weston arrives at Howard University with an eighteen-credit course load, a future in medicine, and enough backup plans to survive almost anything. He chose the Mecca over the Ivies because he wants to be Logan for once, not the brilliant kid everyone expects to have it together.
For a little while, it works.
There are new friends, late-night study sessions, music in the car, and the relief of being surrounded by people who understand what Howard means. Then a weekend in New York brings Logan face-to-face with Charlie Rivera, a sharp-tongued saxophonist, Jacob Keller’s roommate, and the first person who makes Logan’s life feel less manageable in the best and worst ways.
Logan knows how to work. He knows how to lead, prepare, and keep himself useful. He does not know what to do with wanting Charlie, missing Jacob, or the terrifying possibility that being loved might require him to stop performing competence long enough to be known.
As pressure builds through finals, distance, illness, and the ordinary violences of trying to become an adult too fast, Logan must confront the question he has spent his whole life avoiding: who is he when he cannot hold everything together?
For readers who love contemporary new-adult literary fiction, Black coming-of-age stories, disability representation, music, found family, and emotionally intense queer romance.
