“Death isn’t the end but just an end within our infinite stories.”

from “Another First Chance,” by Robbie Couch

I was first introduced to author Robbie Couch when he popped up on my TikTok “for you page” back in 2022, promoting his then upcoming book “If I See You Again Tomorrow”.

“I write young adult books, I am very gay, and I’m on TikTok.”

I was immediately hooked.

YA books were a lifeline for me growing up as a teen in the 90s. Christopher Pike, Richie Tankersley Cusick and R.L. Stine were staples for me late at night, pretending to be asleep past my bedtime, desperate to disappear into a fantasy world where I might be accepted, even if I was secretly attracted to boys.

Growing up, I found relatability in what I now call “gay adjacent” characters. The outsider, new to town, Martha in Cusick’s “Trick or Treat,” or the awkward, sickly Neal in Pike’s “Chain Letter” or sometimes, rarely, actual queer identifying characters such as Spence in “The Midnight Club.” But the LGBTQIA+ characters in those worlds often came with strings. Spence was dying from AIDS, something I didn’t fully understand, yet greatly feared growing up in a conservative home in Mississippi. And a recent revisit to “Chain Letter” reminded me that the F slur was rampant in YA books back then. A mixed message to a closeted teen looking for an escape, no doubt.

Even novels like “A Separate Peace,” and “The Picture of Dorian Gray,” are only suggestive in their queerness. Although I experienced a deep connection to Gene’s internal struggle in “A Separate Peace,” whether or not he was in love with his best friend whom he (66 year old Spoiler Alert) jostled from a tree, in turn mostly hurting himself, wasn’t actually addressed and definitely not the gay story I needed to accept myself. Needless to say, queer or adjacently-so characters in novels I read as a teenager were attached to an emotional cost for me.

When I saw Robbie on my TikTok that day, I went searching for his books and came upon, “The Sky Blues,” his debut novel which I quickly read. I found myself in a YA world I could only have dreamed of when I was a kid. Reading about Sky, his complicated relationship with his religious Mother, and his friends being #gayforsky and each other (it’s a thing, read the book!) was so incredibly comforting, with no need to search for context clues about identity and sexuality. Not to mention the fact that Sky and his friends stood up against homophobia and racism in a way that I barely had the capacity for when I was young.

Finishing “The Sky Blues” led me right to “Blaine for the Win” and then “If I See You Again Tomorrow.” With each book, Robbie went a bit deeper and with “Tomorrow” showed incredible skill with his speculative writing.

As much as I have loved all of his books, his new novel,” Another First Chance” takes Robbie as a writer and us, the reader, to a new level.

“Another First Chance” tells the story of River Lang, who lost his best friend Dylan in a car accident a year prior.

River walks through his world of grief where everyone around him, from human beings to billboards are focused on the tragedy and the drexting (driving and texting) of Dylan’s death. In the year since Dylan’s passing, River sees a helpful/unhelpful (that’s grief!) counselor and is often reminded by his Mom to be careful of his “inappropriate reactions.”

On Dylan’s “deathiversery,” it all becomes too much, leading him to take action in a way that makes absolute sense to River and would have been appreciated, comically, by Dylan if he were still alive. Not everyone sees it that way though, and when another classmate figures out what River did, he threatens to blackmail River, forcing him to join the “Affinity Trials,” a research experiment that is studying teens who are “struggling socially.” Either River joins the trial and gives the classmate half the participant money or he tells all!

Robbie, as with his other books,” has assembled an assortment of diverse and incredibly individual characters, including Dylan’s girlfriend Mavis who also happens to have been River’s friend and was with Dylan when he died. Believing that Mavis rightfully blames him for Dylan’s death, they haven’t spoken to each other since the accident.

As the trials get under way, we realize that things may not be as they seem. Do Goldie Candles (Mavis’s snarky friend) and Biggs (a social media influencer) really have issues making friends? Would Nora, one of researchers in charge, actually bend the rules for River as much as she does and for the reason that she gives? And why is the trial set up at the school?

All these questions and more are explained by Couch in a way that I have found so remarkable in his previous work as well. He manages to make your head deliberately and delightfully spin with questions while keeping you hooked into the story until he reveals everything perfectly and succinctly.

The portrayal of grief in “Another First Chance” is delivered in a way that I believe will be very healing for anyone (and that’s everyone eventually, right?) who has experienced the death of a loved one. Couch explores what happens to the relationships with the people who leave us after they die. And through Mavis and River we see what happens when a beloved friend is ripped away from a trio. How can they move forward, especially when so much was already and continues to be unspoken?

I don’t want to give too much away, but despite the majority of the book being told from River’s point of view, Couch also weaves in Dylan’s POV (multiple POVs being a new technique for him) leading up to the accident. How many of us have imagined what might have been going through our loved ones minds when they were taken away suddenly? I know I have.

I sometimes still imagine how things might have been had Scott, my first love who died, had lived. Since his death I have often wondered, “what if” for us. And in a situation all too familiar to River’s I also lost my best friend, Amy, in a car accident. I still play the unknown events of her passing in my head. What Robbie has done with “Another First Chance” is give me and anyone struggling with grief a great gift by allowing River an opportunity to have what he (and we) didn’t quite manage the first time.

“Another First Chance” is available now where books are sold!