The Rules of Us

On the night that Jillian Bortles approaches her longtime boyfriend, Henry Yoo, about losing their virginities to each other, the unexpected happens—they both come out to one another as queer. Despite the revelation, the two New Yorkers vow to remain best friends and continue to pursue the future they’ve been building together, which involves snagging the coveted Purdy Memorial Scholarship, attending Oneida Polytechnic Institute, and starting their own video game company. They enter the summer with a set of rules meant to guarantee their success in staying friends: “no fighting, no messing around, no more running, Purdy first.” But when the Purdy scholarship committee requests that they sign up for summer experiences that demonstrate their well-roundedness, Jillian and Henry find themselves separated for the first time ever, and new crushes, old hurts, and tightly held secrets create fissures in their friendship. Through Jillian’s intense and emotionally raw first-person POV, Nissley (The Mythic Koda Rose) depicts the duo’s codependent relationship and eventual untangling with earnest nuance, making for a tender portrait of a girl on the cusp of adulthood trying to reconcile the future she thought she’d have with the one she is heading toward. Jillian is white and Henry is Korean. Ages 14–up. Agent: Danielle Burby, Mad Woman Literary. (May)