Don't Let Me Go--"You're not going to straighten things out by running away. Take the phone and talk to your boyfriend!"

Title:  Don't Let Me Go

Author: J.H. Trumble


What it’s about (in 75 words or fewer): Adam is in New York appearing in a play, while Nate is still home for his senior year of high school.  Nate has always depended on Adam for support and desperately misses him. Nate makes a new friend, Danial, but is finding a long-distance relationship very difficult to maintain. Nate starts a blog, which causes some controversy, and begins helping naive, closeted Luke, but if Nate's not careful, he's going to lose Adam for good.


What I think (in 250 words or fewer): Do you like teenage romance novels with angst, an extra side of angst, and angst for dessert?  Then you'll really enjoy Don't Let me Go.

Actually, that's a bit misleading.  Angst to me implies fluffy, over-the-top teenage nonsense, and that's not completely true about Adam and Nate.


Their relationship in the story is told in the present time and flashbacks to the year before, when they met and started dating, and also when Nate and Adam are victims of a horrifying assault and have to testify in court.

Nate, who is dealing with PTSD, relies on Adam to be his rock.  And Adam does something that is not done enough in YA novels: he gets Nate to go to therapy to deal with his emotions.  Instead of this being a typical teenage romance in which everyone misunderstands everything, causing a bunch of drama that could have been resolved with one conversation, Don't Let Me Go is different (thankfully).

Several times, Nate's friends flat-out tell Nate to call his boyfriend and talk to him.  Bravo, teenage characters with maturity!

Nate does things on impulse. I get his desire to find himself and "be super queer," and the principal was a victim-blamer, but I do wish that an adult had calmly sat down with Nate and said, "We understand your point-of-view, but you are jeopardizing your safety and the safety of others."

But then again, Nate learns this the hard way with his assault and Luke's [spoiler deleted].


This book is on the 2013 Rainbow Book List.


My final takeaway (in 75 words or fewer): I actually love me some angsty romance, and Trumble's characters are very powerfully written. Nate is a mess, but I really liked his friends.  The flashback narrative structure worked well. I recommend this book like I've recommended Where You Are by the same author.  Both books are very intense reads that I enjoyed immensely.

I could have done without the Harry Potter-style epilogue, but it was interesting that in the future the characters are [SPOILER DELETED]. 😜


Memorable quotes/passages from the book:

• "You have to face it. Don't let those creeps do this to you. Don't let them do this to us. If you do, the creeps win" (paperback edition, pg. 95).
• "When you're all alone in and in your jammies and feeling gooey again, call him. I know you love him. That's so obnoxiously obvious. What's the worst that could happen? Somebody gets hurt? But you gotta think about all the great things you could miss out on if you don't take a chance" (pg. 201).
• "Those boys f***** you up in more ways than one, didn't they Nate? . . . He's not a psychologist. He's not Superman. You want a hero, Nate? Go catch a matinee. You want your head shrunk? Go see your Dr. Parkenson. But leave Adam alone. You don't deserve him. Oh, and just to set the record straight, he kissed me back" (pg. 203).
• "I just broke the heart of someone I care about very much. And I have to know if I did the right thing" (pg. 282).

Other reviews:  Muggle-Born and Jellyfish Reads


This book is available in the Greensboro Public Library.