At the end of the novel, Morgan’s life isn’t tidy or depression-free, but it’s better than it was. As Parker reflects in an author’s note: Self-discovery is a lifelong pursuit; figuring stuff out leads to more things that need to be figured out. “I decided to keep being alive,” Morgan says at one point, “so I have to decide how to do it.

336 pp. Delacorte. $18.99.



JULIET TAKES A BREATH

By Gabby Rivera

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It’s 2003 and Juliet Milagros Palante, the droll and earnest 19-year-old heroine of this debut novel, is struggling to breathe — both literally (she has asthma) and figuratively (she feels like there “isn’t enough air” in the Bronx). Juliet comes out to her close-knit Puerto Rican family hours before she gets on a plane for Portland, Ore., where she’ll spend the summer interning for a feminist author named Harlowe Brisbane.

Brisbane’s famous book about empowerment has been a refuge for Juliet, a way to mentally escape the neighborhood “bro-dudes” who harass her in the grocery store and the anxiety of being young, gay and uncertain. But as Juliet researches “fierce” women for Brisbane, learns new feminist vocabulary and meets other gay women of color, she becomes conflicted about her hero worship for Brisbane and even more confused about womanhood and what it means for her.

Read “Juliet Takes a Breath” slowly and your imagination may catch on some of the novel’s logistical snafus and rhetorical devices that don’t quite work. But if you read too quickly you might miss the bite of Juliet’s humor or the adeptness with which Rivera captures both the disappointments and the possibilities that come with realizing that your life’s solution cannot be figured out by someone else.