Jade Sylvan

In It Wasn’t Love, we ride Korean-American adoptee and brutal rape survivor Millie Vaniti’s interior life through late adolescence and early adulthood as she pilots a coming-of-age shaken by shame and a longing to be fully accepted and loved. Millie is remarkably relatable, and author JS Lee manages to tackle subject matter that could easily be overwrought or hackneyed quite poignantly by giving it to us straight. No romanticizing. No aplomb. Just one of the most honest portrayals of young sexuality and identity that you’re likely to find. This is more than non-fiction. This is true.
—Jade Sylvan, author of Kissing Oscar Wilde, Ten, and more