It Looks Like This

It Looks Like This

by Rafi Mittlefehldt

Overview

It Looks Like This by Rafi Mittlefehldt

In spare, understated prose heightened by a keen lyricism, a debut author will take your breath away.

A new state, a new city, a new high school. Mike’s father has already found a new evangelical church for the family to attend, even if Mike and his plainspoken little sister, Toby, don’t want to go. Dad wants Mike to ditch art for sports, to toughen up, but there’s something uneasy behind his demands. Then Mike meets Sean, the new kid, and “hey” becomes games of basketball, partnering on a French project, hanging out after school. A night at the beach. The fierce colors of sunrise. But Mike’s father is always watching. And so is Victor from school, cell phone in hand. In guarded, Carveresque prose that propels you forward with a sense of stomach-dropping inevitability, Rafi Mittlefehldt tells a wrenching tale of first love and loss that exposes the undercurrents of a tidy suburban world. Heartbreaking and ultimately life-affirming, It Looks Like This is a novel of love and family and forgiveness—not just of others, but of yourself.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781536200430
Publisher: Candlewick Press
Publication date: 04/10/2018
Edition description: Reprint
Pages: 336
Sales rank: 260,067
Product dimensions: 5.50(w) x 7.70(h) x 1.00(d)
Age Range: 14 Years

About the Author

Rafi Mittlefehldt has worked as a reporter for a small-town newspaper in central Texas and has freelanced as a theater critic for Exeunt magazine. This is his debut novel. Raised in Austin, Texas, he works in book publishing and lives in New York City.

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It Looks Like This 4.7 out of 5 based on 0 ratings. 3 reviews.
Anonymous 5 months ago
I could not put this book down! I tore through it faster than usual. The author did such a good job of developing the characters and I felt like I knew each one like a friend. Wow!
Anonymous More than 1 year ago
Okay i cried...... a damn lot. Its such an amazing and emotional book
Sandy5 More than 1 year ago
I liked this novel as I thought what occurred inside its chapters were realistic and I thought even though the dialogue was not in quotations, it added a subtleness to the novel. Mike and his family had just moved to Virginia and he was a freshman at school. He was close to his younger sister Toby, and he walked her to her middle school when the weather allowed him to. Mike found friends easily enough but it was Sean who caught his eye and soon the two of them were partners in French class working on a classroom assignment. Mike’s parents are church attending individuals, dragging their children with them when they saw fit. Mike’s father was a man who liked to rub elbows with the men at church, he wanted to make a good appearance with those he met and those in the community. Victor liked to make trouble for Mike at school. Victor was Mike’s thorn. Working on their French assignment one evening, Sean makes advances toward Mike. Mike was bewildered and stunned at first but Mike had been eyeing Sean and what Mike had just felt was something he knew he could not ignore. An intimate secret has just been created, if only the two of them could keep it between themselves. Mike’s family becomes major players in Mike’s life as he deals with his sexuality. There were times I was so ticked off at Mike’s father yet I knew exactly where his father’s position was coming from. His father was narrow-minded, he was all about appearances and he thought he was doing what the good book told him to do. I really liked Toby, they had a great relationship and I am glad that she stood by him. The novel told the story of what it is like to love, to suffer, to fight for your right to be heard, to be different, to be one of many and to be a friend. Thank you to Candlewick Press for sending me a copy of this novel, I greatly appreciated it. This review is my own opinion of this novel.