NO ONE LEFT BUT YOU

After coming out as trans to the most popular boy in school and burning their budding relationship to the ground, Max wants nothing more than to disappear.

The arrival of a mysterious new girl turns Max’s life utterly inside out, however. Gloss is everything Max is not: rich, sophisticated, sure of herself and her place in the world. Yet she sees him for who he truly is, defends his identity, and forces others to acknowledge his truth. She is his salvation and destruction, and now she’s in jail because of him. Max’s small, predominantly white English town—the setting for this book that is part coming-of-age story and part murder mystery—is well realized. Max is a keen musician who expresses himself in the lyrics he writes; McAdam’s masterfully musical language effectively brings this theme to the novel as a whole. There’s a maturity and depth to the raw emotion and a hypersaturated intensity to the imagery. Max is a vulnerable, honest, engaging narrator, whose search for truths—his own, Gloss’, and that of the fateful night his old life died—unfurls at an addictively relentless pace. His relationship with Gloss is painfully compelling, equal parts beautifully self-affirming and toxic. The inner lives of supporting characters are rich and muddled, reflecting the complexity of life.

Poignant and intoxicating.