PRACTICALLY EVER AFTER

A stressed-out high school senior struggles to balance logic and love.

Grace Correa has made all the “right” decisions, including choosing a high-salaried career concentration and forgoing her love of dance for cheerleading in order to enhance her transcript and social status. Weeks before graduation, she has a tight group of friends at her suburban Pennsylvania high school and a loving girlfriend, Leia, who attends the local private school. But when Grace overcommits to a grueling final engineering project and a substitute teacher gig at her aunt’s dance studio, her personal life falls apart—and she questions whether to stay with Leia when, statistically, most high school relationships don’t survive the freshman year of college. The third entry in the Ever After series is full of charming, nuanced characters, most of all Grace, whose passions range from designing a rehabilitation glove that’s functional yet fashionable to teaching modern dance to adults. Most characters seem to be white, although naming conventions imply that Grace and her family might be Latinx and that some secondary characters are ethnically diverse. Grace’s relationship with Leia is embraced by everyone around them.

A satisfying romance whose queer narrator possesses a desire to have it all.