First love is often downright Shakespearean, as the love-lorn characters in these three books discover. From falling for your sworn enemy, to being torn apart, contending with tradition, love triangles, and more. From Faith Erin Hicks, Comics Will Break Your Heart is a modern romance, a Romeo and Juliet story of geek royalty, where Miriam falls for the grandson of the man who defrauded her grandfather out of the smash-hit comic series he co-created. In Sabina Khan’s The Love and Lies of Rukhsana Ali, Rukhasana’s world falls apart when her conservative Muslim parents catch her kissing her girlfriend and send her to Bangladesh, where she searches for the courage to fight for her love without losing her family. In Abdi Nazemian’s Like a Love Story, it’s 1989, and Reza has just moved to New York City, where the AIDS crisis is inescapable, and where he meets Judy, an aspiring fashion designer, and Art, a photographer and Judy’s best friend. A love triangle, of course, traps the three as they figure out who they are in a time of upheaval. Moderated by Natasha Forrester-Campbell of Multnomah County Library.
