High school seniors Mark and Kate have sat next to each other in class all year but have rarely spoken. On the first night of Pride, the two run into each other in a San Francisco bar, where Kate is avoiding a setup with her (likely) soul mate, Violet, and Mark is trying to impress the (definite) love of his life, Ryan. Through this chance encounter, they realize they are each uniquely prepared to guide each other through the loneliness of first loves, friendship crises and heartbreaks that lie ahead.

You Know Me Well, by Nina LaCour and David Levithan, perfectly encapsulates those fraught, end-all-be-all feelings of high-school romance and graduation. Authors Nina LaCour and David Levithan have the utmost respect for their subjects. Kate and Mark—and all their friends—are allowed to feel like every fight and every heartbreak is the end of the world; they’re allowed to run away, to lash out, to curl up in bed and cry.

The raw emotion of this novel will delight fans of Rainbow Rowell and John Green.

This article was written for and published in the June 2016 issue of BookPage.See the original, here.