Greta & Valdin, Rebecca K Reilly’s delightful debut, chronicles the daily lives of two queer siblings who are really, honestly just trying their best. Greta is a financially struggling grad student with an all-consuming, unrequited crush on a coworker, and Valdin is her obsessive compulsive brother who’s still in love with his ex-boyfriend (who, of course, also happens to be their uncle’s husband’s brother). In alternating first-person chapters, the eponymous siblings wade through the muck of adulthood—and the challenges presented by their large and lively Māori-Russian-Catalonian family—with traditional 20-something existentialism. It’s sprawling and chaotic, but Reilly makes it easy to root for the duo in this hilarious, emotional, and very gay novel about the multitude of ways in which we can care for one another.
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