Come Home to My Heart by Riley Redgate is one of those books I absolutely ached over.
Having written some of my favorite young adult contemporary novels–Final Draft and Look No Further–Riley Redgate is an auto-read author for me and I was thrilled to see she had a new novel coming out. (With a cover by Tillie Walden, one of my favorite graphic novelists. We love a niche literary crossover aimed directly at me!) Come Home to My Heart absolutely did not disappoint, and I found it to be a moving and sincere coming-of-age story about home, rejection, and the powerful lifeline of connecting with someone who truly sees you.
Xia Harper and Gloria Forman are both seniors at the same high school in a small South Carolina town, but at the start of the novel, they also exist in completely separate worlds. Xia is a transplant from Atlanta counting down the days until she can leave her small town, a biracial girl in a predominantly white community, and a loner who lives inside books and keeps others away with her spiky attitude. Gloria is everything she isn’t–a devoted Christian, popular, and a straight-A people pleaser. But beneath the façades they present to the outside world, they have something in common: they’re both lesbians being stifled by their conservative environments. While Xia is sleepwalking through life until she can go somewhere she can be herself, Gloria is convinced that she can press down her feelings and sand off her edges to become the perfectly straight Chrisian her parents want her to be.
Despite their differences, the two girls slip into an unexpected friendship, called to each other in ways they haven’t felt before. But for both of them, this vulnerability and the promise of a budding romance is terrifying in different ways. Xia is used to holding others at arm’s length while Gloria is desperately trying to stay afloat after her parents kick her out of their home for being gay. As their feelings grow, the two girls must confront the truths that come to the surface and the stakes of their relationship.
Gloria and Xia both felt like incredibly nuanced, real characters shaped by their histories and families into very different people who nonetheless find a spark of connection in each other. The relationship that forms between the two girls isn’t just a teen crush, but a lifeline for both of them. Come Home to My Heart is a novel about faith, family, queerness, and the ways they intersect or conflict, but it’s also a story about the power of being truly seen and known by another person.
Homelessness isn’t something I’ve seen explored much in young adult fiction, which is one of the reasons Come Home to My Heart caught my attention. Redgate unfolds Gloria’s story with what felt to me with nuance and care, exploring the shame, desperation, and secrets that Gloria finds herself drowning in. I read so much of this novel with my heart in my throat, hoping for Gloria to find the help and sense of belonging she was lacking. While Gloria hides her struggles under a pretense of perfection and ease, desperate to please her parents, Xia has spent her high school years sunken into a void of loneliness and an outwardly uncaring attitude, even as she hungers for community and connections. They’re wonderfully suited to each other and co-protagonists and love interests, offering the other one a space for truth and vulnerability.
While Redgate doesn’t hold back from exploring the rejection and prejudice her characters face, Come Home to My Heart is a cathartic and ultimately uplifting story that offers its characters love and connection. Much like its title, Redgate’s book found a home in my heart and I expect it will reside there for some time.
Representation: lesbian main character; biracial Chinese American/white, lesbian main character
Content warnings: homelessness, parental rejection, homophobia, religious trauma
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