Publication Date: June 11, 2024
Lifelong best friends spend a fateful summer discovering what might happen if they were to be something more in this radiant, heart-clenching adult debut.
Laniah Thompson is a homebody who craves privacy. Issac Jordan is internet famous and spends his days followed by paparazzi. She runs a small business with her mom in her hometown. He runs an international brand.
And they’ve been best friends since childhood.
When Issac comes home to Providence for the first time in months and discovers Laniah’s dream is slipping out of reach as she and her mom struggle to pay the bills at Wildly Green, their natural hair store, she refuses to take a dime from him. And so, he does what any self-respecting best friend would do: tells the world they’re dating.
Suddenly business is booming, and Laniah agrees to his ridiculous plan to pretend to be lovers for the course of the summer. Just long enough to catch the eye of an investor and get her dream back on track, like she helped him do so many years ago, he reminds her.
Too soon, though, Laniah knows she’s playing with fire, because for as long as they’ve been friends there’s an undeniable pull they’ve never given in to. And as the lines between art and life—real and pretend—blur, it becomes harder and harder to see where friendship ends and something else begins….
Told over the course of three sizzling summer months, A Love Like the Sun is about shared history, those who make us our bravest selves, and love in its many forms.
A Love Like the Sun is the debut adult novel by Riss M. Neilson, and I will be back for more.
Laniah and Isaac have been best friends since childhood and have loved each other from afar, even if they failed to recognize or put a name to their feelings throughout the years. Each has things in their childhoods to get past that made them run from love or a deeper connection. The story goes from the past to the present and back again, and there is a lot of reminiscing in the present. Memories often get the characters through difficult times and situations. Isaac is always there for Ni, and they are good together, whether best friends, lovers or more. There is a richness to the story, and I loved the chapter titles. The title played a surprising role throughout, and a light was shone on it at the end.
I love the depth of the characters, their friendships, and familial love and relationships. However, the story sometimes moved slowly and was often repetitive, especially when Ni held back from expressing herself or kept secrets. There is a happily ever after and closure with the epilogue, but the ending seemed rushed, so I couldn’t savor what transpired. The discussion questions were thoughtful and a nice addition.
A Love Like the Sun is set in Providence and Los Angeles, and it was easy to visualize the settings. The twists and turns had me rooting for the main characters and for their relationship as best friends to become more as we got caught up in their lives.
Riss M. Neilson is a magna cum laude graduate of Rhode Island College, where she won the English department’s Jean Garrigue Award, which was judged by novelist Nick White. Her debut young adult novel, Deep in Providence, was a 2022 finalist for the New England Book Awards, and her forthcoming novel I’m Not Supposed to be in the Dark is set to publish in 2023. She is from Providence and lives for the city’s art and culture scene. When she’s not writing, she’s watching anime or playing video games with her two children. A Love Like the Sun is her adult debut.
