I finished Empress of the World by Sara Ryan last night, and it was wonderful. The characters speak like real teenagers. They bicker and love and worry and spark. The main character, Nicola, Nic to her friends, is a smart, artistic 15-year old girl who is spending the summer at a camp for gifted high schoolers. There she meets a collection of boys and girls who are as weird and cool as she is. And it is also there that she falls in love for the first time, with Battle, a girl.
Up until the summer, Nic had always believed that she was straight, but she can't deny what she feels even if that means she's a lesbian...or even scarier, bisexual. Nic has made sense of the world around her by picking it apart. She loves archeology, her major at the camp, precisely because it allows her to analyze the artifacts of people who have long since passed. Loving Battle, who has wounds that run deep, means allowing life to happen and letting people just be. I felt very connected to the Nic for this reason. I tend to over-think everything despite it never making my life any more logical.
I love young adult fiction. And I am excited that Ryan continued the story of Battle in her new book. I recommend her first book to anyone who has ever loved another human being, of either gender.
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