The real world skins you alive. It's a hazard of growing up in rural Suffolk... or possibly, it's a hazard of growing up. Either way, the Dorian Andrade and Isaiah Matalon who reunite at a party in Oxford have become equally disenchanted imitations of the boys who used to spend summers eating apples on the riverbank. A lot has changed in the six years since they saw each other. One thing is still the same: the longing for each other's company. But aren't the objects of our yearning so much easier to encounter in the imagination than when they're standing in front of us? GENRE: literary fiction, queer romance TROPES: second chance romance, friends to lovers, mutual pining COMP TITLES: A Little Life, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous, Call Me By Your Name, basically Wolfstar Muggle AU featured in Ambassador Reads featured in Ambassador Recommendations: Living Beyond Labels Dec 24 featured in Ambassadors: Slice of life featured in ContemporaryLit: Ambassadors' Picks featured in ContemporaryLit: LGBTQ+ Contemporary featured in ContemporaryLit: Literary Fiction featured in lgbtq: ManxMan (NA/Adult Fiction) featured in FreeTheLGBT: Diverse Literature featured in WattpadLitFic: Novels featured in WattpadMulticultural: September 2023 Reads of the Month

LIKE FIGS ON A HOT SUMMER DAY, Yusuf Khayat is slowly losing form. Watching the people around him beat up by life and ambition, he thinks it better to be uninvolved rather than hurt, better a bystander than an accomplice. But when a career shift transforms him into a walking culture shock, he has no choice but to stand out by blending in. OR..... A perpetual immigrant is suddenly forced to belong.