In spare, understated prose heightened by an enthusiastic lyricism, a debut author will need your breath away.A new state, a new city, a fresh high school. Mike’s dad has already found a new evangelical cathedral for the family members to attend, also if Mike and his plainspoken small sister, Toby, don’t wish to go. Dad wants Mike to ditch art for sports, to toughen up, but there’s something uneasy behind his demands. Then Mike matches Sean, the brand new child, and “hey” becomes games of basketball, partnering on a French project, hanging out after school. A night time at the seaside. The fierce colours of sunrise. But Mike’s dad is always watching. And so is Victor from school, cell phone at hand. In guarded, Carveresque prose that propels you ahead with a feeling of stomach-dropping inevitability, Rafi Mittlefehldt tells a wrenching tale of first like and reduction that exposes the undercurrents of a tidy suburban world. Heartbreaking and ultimately life-affirming, It Looks Like This is a novel of like and family members and forgiveness—not only of others, but of yourself.