Citation: Nazemian, A. (2019). Like a love story (First paperback edition). Balzer + Bray.
Reza is a true outsider: a gay Iranian teenager who moves to New York City during the AIDS crisis. Befriending fellow misfits Judy and Art, Reza begins a love triangle that will test each of their capacities for both love and friendship.
Set during the late eighties of New York City, Reza navigates a world in which HIV/AIDS emerged as both an infectious fatal illness and as a source of discrimination against the LGBTQ+ community. To be queer meant to be marked as a danger to society; cultural misunderstandings surrounding the virus demonized queer people who continued to die without a chance of help (it was a crisis that went unacknowledged by the then-serving US president Ronald Reagan).
By depicting an extremely dangerous time in history to be queer, Like a Love Story is a tender account of hope throughout unfathomable loss.
Check out our other review of Like a Love Story here.