Lovesick Falls
by Julia Drake
High School    Little, Brown    336 pp.
6/25    9780759557826    $19.99
e-book ed.  9780759557444    $12.99

Celia, Ros, and Touchstone are a “triumvirate” of rising high school seniors. They spend the summer on their own for the first time at a cabin in Lovesick Falls, a town known for its spring that purportedly can make anyone who drinks from it fall out of love. Celia, the ringleader of the summer and of pretty much everything, narrates most of the story: her romantic feelings for Ros and subsequent feelings when Ros sets their sights on a new summer acquaintance; her own flirtation with a celeb crush who shows up at the theater where she has a costume-shop internship; and more. (And if third roommate Touchstone sounds neglected, dear reader, you’re less oblivious than his friends are.) Drake’s reimagining of Shakespeare’s As You Like It has plenty to appeal to theater nerds, language nerds, and fans of queer romance. While the humor is plentiful, there’s also lots of introspection in this collective coming-of-age story; this is a friend group steeped in tradition and dearly held in-jokes, but some of its patterns are overdue for reexamination, as occasional point-of-view shifts help to show. Emotions aren’t as simple as a drink from a spring, and first steps toward adulthood aren’t simple either—but on this stage, comedy ultimately outweighs tragedy.

From the September/October 2025 issue of The Horn Book Magazine.