Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Like a Love Story
    Like a Love Story
    Like a Love Story
    Audiobook10 hours

    Like a Love Story

    Written by Abdi Nazemian

    Narrated by Lauren Ambrose, Vikas Adam and Michael Crouch

    4.5/5

    ()

    Switch to ebook

    About this audiobook

    2020 Audie Awards® Finalist - Young Adult 

    Stonewall Honor Book * A Time Magazine Best YA Book of All Time

    ""A book for warriors, divas, artists, queens, individuals, activists, trend setters, and anyone searching for the courage to be themselves.”—Mackenzi Lee, New York Times bestselling author of The Gentleman’s Guide to Vice and Virtue

    It’s 1989 in New York City, and for three teens, the world is changing.

    Reza is an Iranian boy who has just moved to the city with his mother to live with his stepfather and stepbrother. He’s terrified that someone will guess the truth he can barely acknowledge about himself. Reza knows he’s gay, but all he knows of gay life are the media’s images of men dying of AIDS.

    Judy is an aspiring fashion designer who worships her uncle Stephen, a gay man with AIDS who devotes his time to activism as a member of ACT UP. Judy has never imagined finding romance...until she falls for Reza and they start dating.

    Art is Judy’s best friend, their school’s only out and proud teen. He’ll never be who his conservative parents want him to be, so he rebels by documenting the AIDS crisis through his photographs.

    As Reza and Art grow closer, Reza struggles to find a way out of his deception that won’t break Judy’s heart—and destroy the most meaningful friendship he’s ever known.

    This is a bighearted, sprawling epic about friendship and love and the revolutionary act of living life to the fullest in the face of impossible odds.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins
    Release dateJun 4, 2019
    ISBN9780062911131
    Author

    Abdi Nazemian

    Abdi Nazemian is the author of Like a Love Story, a Stonewall Honor Book, Only This Beautiful Moment, The Chandler Legacies, and The Authentics. His novel The Walk-In Closet won the Lambda Literary Award for LGBT Debut Fiction. His screenwriting credits include the films The Artist’s Wife, The Quiet, and Menendez: Blood Brothers and the television series Ordinary Joe and The Village. He has been an executive producer and associate producer on numerous films, including Call Me by Your Name, Little Woods, and The House of Tomorrow. He lives in Los Angeles with his husband, their two children, and their dog, Disco. Find him online at abdinazemian.com.

    Related to Like a Love Story

    Related audiobooks

    YA Romance For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Alan Cumming

      Nov 1, 2021

      Alan Cumming
      5 min read

    • Article

      Dispatches From the Trenches of Domestic Life

      Mar 2, 2018

      Six years ago my wife gave me a pair of house slippers. My first ever. A domestic present I thought signaled some new phase of my life. I thanked her. Tried them on. Plush fur lined the inside. I stood up to make a show of enjoying them. Then she han

      6 min read

    • Article

      Finding Peace—and Briefly, Freedom—at My Grandfather’s Funeral

      Oct 11, 2019

      “Saying goodbye with the people who loved him—and me—I remember that I am not the tomb that imprisons me.”

      6 min read

    • Article

      Ask A Silly Question

      Aug 5, 2022

      I SIT IN THE DOCTOR’S OFFICE. He asks: “So, when did you know?” I say: “Always.” Because I’ve heard that simplicity gets results. It is one phrase that has spanned my lifetime. No matter what setting, country or occasion, it remains un defeatable. Li

      12 min read

    • Article

      THE greatest LOVE

      Oct 21, 2021

      THE greatest LOVE
      10 min read

    • Article

      A Letter To My Son

      Mar 5, 2020

      A Letter To My Son
      7 min read

    • Article

      Accept This!

      Aug 6, 2020

      Staring at the bright stage light ahead, I held up my script. Reading out my lines, I spoke clearly, loudly, and passionately, just like I’d practiced. At 10 years old, I was auditioning for a school play, and was filled with confidence. I’ve got th

      5 min read

    • Article

      Deborah Meaden

      Jul 10, 2023

      Deborah Meaden
      6 min read

    • Article

      Henry Winkler

      Jan 8, 2024

      Henry Winkler
      6 min read

    • Article

      Michael Buble

      Apr 3, 2023

      Michael Buble
      6 min read

    • Article

      Anita Rani

      Jul 25, 2022

      Anita Rani
      5 min read

    • Article

      Musings On My Father

      Aug 8, 2022

      Musings On My Father
      5 min read

    • Article

      Joanna Scanlan

      May 24, 2021

      A At 16 I was at a very pleasant girls’ boarding school in North Wales. I enjoyed that life, I had bags of fabulous friends – I’ve enjoyed friendship all through my life. Until I was 16 I always took it upon myself to stand up for what I saw as injus

      5 min read

    • Article

      Coming To Terms

      May 25, 2021

      Coming To Terms
      14 min read

    • Article

      Our Little Game

      Feb 16, 2023

      Splashing around in the water, the beach was a normal outing. With my two brothers running around Swansea Beach, my mum, Agatha*, now 53, and dad, Carl, now 55, watched us from a distance. We’d tend to go to the seaside quite a lot, and at age four,

      6 min read

    • Article

      The Space Between Us

      Oct 9, 2019

      The Space Between Us
      8 min read

    • Article

      Letters to Mum

      Apr 14, 2021

      Letters to Mum
      5 min read

    • Article

      Girls On The Playground

      Feb 18, 2021

      Girls On The Playground
      15 min read

    • Article

      Dirty Daddy

      Sep 7, 2023

      Dirty Daddy
      6 min read

    • Article

      Birthday Surprise

      Sep 17, 2021

      Birthday Surprise
      5 min read

    • Article

      I Failed My Daughter

      Jul 29, 2022

      I Failed My Daughter
      9 min read

    • Article

      To Live a Little

      Oct 3, 2022

      To Live a Little
      13 min read

    • Article

      My Journey

      Oct 1, 2020

      Ellie Coneley, 18, Leeds When I was born, I was diagnosed with a bilateral Tessier cleft. It meant that not only did I have facial deformities from my lip up, but I was blind in my left eye as it hadn’t developed properly. My mum, Levi, now 38, had

      5 min read

    • Article

      The MOTHER ODE

      Apr 18, 2022

      The MOTHER ODE
      5 min read

    • Article

      I Was Supposed To Be A Tragedy.

      Apr 16, 2021

      I am the last born of four daughters in an Indian family, which obviously means my birth was a tragedy. Well, at least for those who congratulated my mother with, ‘I’m so sorry,’ or, ‘Better luck next time,’ or who said things amongst themselves like

      6 min read

    • Article

      Tracy-ann Oberman

      Feb 13, 2023

      Tracy-ann Oberman
      5 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Like a Love Story

    4.5/5

    255 ratings11 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 4/5
      A teen LGBTQ love triangle, but more importantly an honest account of the fear and stigma prevalent in the early days of the AIDS epidemic in America. Also a look inside the Act Up movement who stood against the fear and demanded access to life-saving treatments. Timely for 2022, as Monkey Pox was circulating in the community and was meeting with similar fears and lack of resources. I loved Uncle Stephen’s study cards!
    • 5/5
      This is my favorite book ever. it's such a compelling book and I 100% feel like the author understands what it's like to be gay and they really did their research about the AIDS pandemic. I really. If you're debating reading this book do it. Don't even hesitate it's just so good.
    • 5/5
      This story hit me like a wall of bricks. Every twinge of fear, love, anger, and happiness hit me in a spot I didn’t know I could still feel. It made me remember why you can’t repress yourself forever, and why it only causes your heart to ache. These characters will be in my heart for a long time, and I’m excited to look back at them like old friends.
    • 5/5
      This was a wonderful story of overcoming tragedy and sadness with friendship and love.
    • 5/5
      I am crying this is so important, i need everyone to read it
    • 3/5
      The author tried to cover too much ground and drowned the main story. By the second half of the book, the pacing is more plodding as the author seems bent on covering as much (AIDS and gay cultural) history as possible and is using the main story of the characters as the vehicle to do it.

      Obviously a lot of work went into this — but somewhere in all that effort, the core story of Art, Judy and Riza took a backseat.
    • 5/5
      4.5 que lindo encontrarse con esos libros que no esperabas leer en tu vida y que te terminen gustando tanto
    • 4/5
      I give this 4.5 stars. This is a M/M YA romance set in NYC in the 80s during the AIDs crisis. It's also a coming of age and coming out story of an Iranian boy. There were so many layers to this book and I really enjoyed it. The only thing that kept me from giving this 5 stars was that I didn't like how it felt like Art was nagging Razi to do something that he wasn't quite ready to do.
    • 5/5
      diverse teen fiction--closeted Iranian-American 17-y.o. boy meets 'out' boy and his teen girl friend (who gets teased for being fat) and her AIDS-dying uncle in 1989-90 NYC
      sweet, bitter, and full of heart. I am definitely going to cry before this book ends.

      I did cry, but not where I thought I would. I especially loved Uncle Stephen's study cards which explained why he thought Madonna was so bad-ass (and why you should too), and other bits of wisdom and guidance he wanted to pass on to Art and Judy, including a hilarious NOT-TO-BE-MISSED talk on proper condom storage (keep them in a cool place, and if you must carry one in your wallet, replace them regularly after each outing, even if you don't get a chance to use any).
    • 2/5
      I really, really wanted to like this one, but I just couldn't get interested in the characters or the story. *shrug*
    • 4/5
      Like A Love Story by Abdi Nazemian takes a raw and sometimes difficult look at the heart of the AIDS crisis in the 1980s. Reza’s mother has just remarried and moved them from Toronto (and Iran before that) to New York City. Besides navigating the new school, jerky stepbrother, and other changes, Reza also thinks he may be gay. He meets best friends, Judy and Art, (who narrate different chapters of the book) and through relationships with them becomes active in AIDS protests and works to find himself. Nazemian captures teenage voices well and doesn’t shy away from honest portrayals of the early victims of AIDS and their struggles. At times some characters veer into caricature territory, and others feel very forced and plot-driven, but overall still an enjoyable read that depicts important pieces of our history that we don’t often see.