WHY CAN'T RELATIONSHIPS BE LIKE PIZZA?

Set in Boston, Roamer’s third installment in a series stars a gentle, queer teenager who’s full of questions.

Picking up after the first two books, Why Can’t Life Be Like Pizza (2020) and Why Can’t Freshman Summer Be Like Pizza (2020), Roamer continues to follow his 15-year-old narrator, RV, into his sophomore year at the prestigious Boston Latin School. Everything in RV’s life seems uneasy at the moment. He’s no longer in the class of his mentor, Mr. Aniso. His best friend Carole is too wrapped up in her crush on a French boy to pay him much attention. His parents’ fights are only getting worse. And, most troubling of all, his friendship with Bobby—the handsome African American jock with whom he shared his first same-sex kiss—has not been the same since Bobby joined varsity football. To cope, RV drowns his teenage sorrows in cheese slices at Joe’s Pizza, his local haunt. He also strikes up a new friendship with Mark, a born-again Christian who first seems only interested in ogling their exotic Spanish teacher, Señorita Sánchez, but slowly reveals surprising depth. RV continues to grapple with his sexuality as LGBTQ+ issues come up around him at home, at school, and in the news, but his exact feelings on whether he’s really gay and how that fits with his Catholic upbringing remain elusive. Roamer’s characters tend to speak a little too earnestly for believable modern-day teenagers. (“Knowing you’re cheering for me will give me even more motivation,” Bobby says stiffly, without any sense of irony or flirtation at one point.) However, RV’s inner monologue feels fluid and endearingly neurotic, and Roamer excels at narrating the book’s most emotional moments. An intriguing potential love triangle seems inevitable, but this story is all about youthful apprehension and hesitation. Some readers might be frustrated with RV’s (and thus the book’s) slow progress, but by focusing on subtler plot points, RV comes to terms with issues of sex, religion, and race at his own pace.

A coming-of-age novel focused on its endearing narrator’s introspection rather than typical teenage drama.