Friday I’m in Love

Camryn Garrett’s Friday I’m In Love opens with Mahalia, a Black queer high schooler in New York, deciding she wants to throw herself a coming-out party. The premise is unusual. Most YA coming out stories are about the secrecy and the fear. This one is about the celebration.

Mahalia spends the book planning the event, which means dealing with her mom’s mixed feelings, her best friend’s anxieties, and her own complicated crush on a girl who may or may not feel the same way.

Garrett writes with warmth. The financial precarity Mahalia’s family lives with is present without becoming the whole story. The friendships feel real, including the ones that get strained along the way.

For readers who liked her earlier book Full Disclosure, or who follow YA writers like Becky Albertalli, this delivers similar pleasures with a different specific lens.