Winter Breakage by David Levithan

Published by Amazon Original Stories on June 23, 2026

“Winter Breakage” is one of six entries in the “Edge of Everything” series of Amazon Original Stories that focus on coming-of-age themes. Teenage insecurity seems to be a common theme in these stories. When Eric tells his friend Noah “I’m scared that nobody wants me here,” he’s echoing Isabel in “Safe Harbor” and Julia in “Julia at the Drive-In.”

The story takes place in early 1991, during the fifth week of Eric’s winter break. He is in his first year of college and has been invited to join four friends from his dorm who are getting together in New York City. They neglected to make a plan so they look in shop windows, consider visiting bookstores, and finally see a Woody Allen movie before heading to Chinatown.

Eric complains about the start of his freshman year: “I don’t feel like I chose my friends; it’s more like whoever made the dorm assignments chose my friends.” Maybe Eric doesn’t bother to attend classes or hang out at the student union, the typical ways in which students meet other students outside of their dorm.

Eric has a mildly obsessive interest in his friend Noah, the only other male who will be joining the outing. “It’s just that somewhere in my head, I’m aware that I’m lonely, and something in my brain is constantly telling me that he might be a person who’d make me feel less lonely.” Eric is a bit needy.

Eric has called Noah four times during the break but Noah hasn’t called him back. He left answering machine messages three times and hung up before the machine could answer the fourth call. He knew Noah was going to Florida for part of the break but still takes it personally that Noah didn’t return his calls after he returned.

When they meet in the city, Eric is snippy. Eric and Noah eventually speak to each other as if they are therapists and work out their lack of communication. It turns out (spoiler alert) they are equally insecure. End of story.

The three female characters serve no purpose at all. David Levithan managed to make New York City dull, but he did the same with Eric and Noah. Why Eric’s desire to open his heart to a guy who snubbed him should be of any interest to a reader is beyond me. I suppose Eric’s insecure loneliness is common to college freshmen who are putting high school behind them and haven’t yet made college connections, but Levithan does more telling than showing and Eric’s eventual confrontation with Noah struck me as artificial.

NOT RECOMMENDED

Safe Harbor by Nicola Yoon and David Yoon

Published by Amazon Original Stories on June 23, 2026

“Safe Harbor” is one of six entries in the “Edge of Everything” series of Amazon Original Stories that focus on coming-of-age themes. The story is shallow, but it might be comforting for parents who want to believe that their kids are capable of divining deep truths about themselves after spending a day with a therapist.

The story is narrated by a teenage girl named Isabel. To assure the absence of doubt about her “mood and angst level,” Isabel wears black eyeliner and black lipstick while painting her nails black and dressing in black combat boots. Isabel accuses her mother of not feeling her emotions, presumably because her mother doesn’t broadcast her emotions through depressing fashion choices.

Isabel’s parents divorced after her father took up with a younger woman. Isabel wants to return to the version of herself she was before the divorce (and wants to once again believe that love is real) but she doesn’t know how. This seems more like something a 40-year-old might say while explaining her emotional struggles when she was a teen, but much of the story struck me as being similarly artificial.

Isabel took an impulsive action that was symbolically destructive but not particularly damaging — Isabel, we are meant to understand, is a good kid who would never do anything really bad — but her parents decided to send her to the Safe Harbor program for teenage children of divorced parents. The program lasts only eight hours, but Isabel acts as if she has been exiled to Siberia. Well, she’s a teenage girl, so she is the essence of drama and overreaction.

There will be an assessment at the end of the day. The therapist will decide which attendees should be recommended for a six-week Saturday morning counseling program. Isabel makes an effort to participate only because she doesn’t want to ruin her Saturday mornings. Perhaps not wearing black lipstick would have been a smarter plan to achieve that goal.

Isabel draws charcoal sketches of other arriving teens, labeling them with pithy judgments, including SCREENAGER and DIVA. When the therapist arrives, they do exercises to work out their “big feelings.” As each kid talks (or doesn’t) about his or her parents’ divorce, the reader encounters a collection of troubled teens who would have been at home in The Breakfast Club. Gray is angry, Preethi is a people pleaser, Joey uses his phone as a shield against his warring parents, Lilliam shops at designer boutiques because her wealthy parents don’t have time for her. Lilliam is Molly Ringwald, Gray is Judd Nelson — you get the drift.

As the kids open up (which they do with surprising ease), Isabel withdraws her judgment of SCREENAGER and DIVA and realizes that they are struggling with their own issues just as she is struggling with hers. So yes, the story is a condensed and simplistic version of The Breakfast Club, without the hijinks and brutal honesty that made the movie a classic.

The kids are aided by a therapist who has problems of her own (her husband died and she is planning to wed her new boyfriend but they’re arguing about the wedding plans). Rather unprofessionally, she puts her fiancé on speaker and the kids hear them arguing. The therapist turns it into a teaching moment. Seriously?

Isabel makes several statements to broadcast her emotional maturity to the reader, including “I can be a big coward hiding behind a sketchbook to avoid the real world” and “I’m secretly as hopeful for this therapy session as I am scared of it” and “This is something different, something I realize I’ve been hungry for. This is someone saying, out loud, my fears and sorrows.” If she already has this level of insight, why does she need therapy? I didn’t buy any of it. Nor did I buy the pollyannish ending.

Maybe this could have evolved into a meatier story by developing the characters in depth. Having each kid give a two-sentence summation of the reason he or she was consigned to therapy camp doesn’t cut it. As a short story, “Safe Harbor” isn’t worth even the few minutes it will take a reader to consume it.  

NOT RECOMMENDED

The Price of Admission by Dustin Thao

Published by Amazon Original Stories on June 23, 2026

“The Price of Admission” is one of six entries in the “Edge of Everything” series of Amazon Original Stories that focus on coming-of-age themes. The protagonist is Evan Dao, a gay teen of Vietnamese ancestry whose mother worked as a hotel maid in New Jersey until she was promoted to the position of housekeeping manager.

Evan hung out at the hotel where his mother worked. The hotel owner’s family lived in a penthouse suite. Evan saw but didn’t interact with the owner’s son, Dalton Claremont.

Evan’s mother dies when he is fifteen and Evan begins to live with his aunt. Moved by Evan’s circumstances, a “loyal guest” of the hotel that employed his mother improbably arranges for Evan to attend a nearby but prestigious private school with a tuition waiver. Dalton is a student at that school.

Evan needs to take a job at a café to make ends meet. Dalton is at the café with rich friends when he notices Evan and realizes he’s a fellow student. Dalton’s snooty friends disparage Evan for working, but Dalton and Evan begin to hang out. Their friendship leads to kissing. Whether it leads to anything else, Dustin Thao leaves to the reader’s imagination.

Evan is exceptionally bright and excels in school. Evan and Dalton are both admitted to Princeton, although Evan is admitted before Dalton. In his first year, Evan writes a compelling essay and wins a scholarship that allows him to join an “eating club” with Dalton and other children of wealthy families.

Dalton begins to snub Evan. Some of Dalton’s friends are vicious in their condemnation of Evan as a charity case who must have relied on affirmative action to earn admission to Princeton. Evan eventually calls out the rich snobs by pointing to the moral deficiencies of their wealthy families.

“The Price of Admission” covers well-trodden ground in its exploration of class divisions and wealth disparities in America. Upward mobility is increasingly a myth, as is the notion that Ivy League educational institutions operate as a meritocracy. Even as the children of wealthy families condemn affirmative action, they enjoy the benefit of legacy admissions. Evan’s breakout moment, his calling out of privilege, rings true.

Evan comes of age by realizing that he wasted time trying to make friends with people who will never accept him as an equal. Even if meritocracy as envisioned by members of the upper class is more a talking point than a reality, Evan has the intelligence and drive to succeed. He comes to realize that social status is less important than friendships rooted in honesty and shared values.

This is a story that older readers will have encountered before. Everything comes a bit too easily to Evan, a reflection of the story’s lack of depth. I imagine younger readers who don’t have outstanding SAT scores might have difficulty relating to him. The story is nevertheless a timely reminder that attacks on affirmative action are driven by people who resist surrendering power or sharing it with those who are not part of their elite social class. Younger readers, in particular, might benefit from the lessons taught in this modern version of a Horatio Alger story.

RECOMMENDED WITH RESERVATIONS

Julia at the Drive-In by Rainbow Rowell

Published by Amazon Original Stories on June 23, 2026

“Julia at the Drive-In” is one of six entries in the “Edge of Everything” series of Amazon Original Stories that focus on coming-of-age themes. It is a first kiss story. The story is mercifully short and ridiculously fluffy. I’ve read about young Japanese women who write stories on their cellphones while riding a bus to school or work. “Julia at the Drive-In” strikes me as the kind of story that might be composed on a cellphone.

Julia Kimball lives in Nebraska. Like other teenage girls throughout history, Julia has self-esteem issues. She worries that her peers don’t want her around. Her new (and perhaps only) friend Chloe suggested that she try a different haircut.

Julia’s new curly hair, with the addition of contact lenses and lip tint, has made boys notice her. The moral of the story seems to be that attractive but nerdy girls can get boys, not by impressing them with their intelligence or kindness or sense of humor, but by changing their hair and removing their glasses.

As the story begins, Julia is alone in the back seat at the drive-in. Most of the story’s early words are divided between detailed descriptions of the boys Julia regards as handsome and angst because those boys don’t realize she’s alive.

When Chloe and her friend Aiden begin canoodling in the front seat, Julia makes a popcorn trip. Wyatt Hardy (“His smile was the best”) catches her staring at him. Wyatt winks at her. Julia enters a state of shock and is still stumbling (“stumbling emotionally”) as she walks back to the car. She changes her destination when she notices that Aiden has his hand inside Chloe’s shirt (but only in the back of the shirt; this story isn’t even PG-13).

Wyatt engages Julia in conversation while leaving the impression that he doesn’t recognize her as a classmate. To the extent that the story has any dramatic tension, it lies in Julia’s fear that Wyatt will reject her if he realizes that she’s a classmate he never noticed before. That tension continues even as Julia gets her first kiss . . . and second and third.

Rainbow Rowell’s writing style is undistinguished. Perhaps she simplified it to tell a story that teenage girls coming of age before the dawn of feminism might have enjoyed.

I’m clearly the wrong audience for this story — I don’t identify with virginal teenage girls — but I have difficulty imagining that any audience would be entertained by Julia’s self-pity or her happy discovery that boys will kiss you if you curl your hair. Even as a pedestrian first kiss story, “Julia at the Drive-In” might have had merit if not for the message that insecure girls only need the right hairstyle and lip gloss to make boys notice them.

NOT RECOMMENDED

As If by Isabel Waidner

First published in Great Britain in 2026; published by FSG Originals on June 16, 2026

Since Shakespeare, identity confusion has been a common theme of literature. As If is a story of identity confusion on steroids. I rarely understand absurdist fiction, but if the story is amusing, I enjoy it. As If hooked me immediately and entertained me thoroughly, even if it left me wondering about its meaning.

Aubrey Lewis is a former actor. He had some minor success, particularly as “an absurdly young Vladimir” in Waiting for Godot, before having a breakdown in a stage production of The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner. That ended his stage career, but he did manage to score a supporting role in a long-running BBC series., Performing with a prosthetic nose, he lasted seventeen years. As the director noted, the part didn’t require a lot of acting: “It’s all in the nose.”

The show was canceled less than six months after Aubrey’s wife Laurie lost a four year battle with cancer. Aubrey moved to an inexpensive sublet to make his savings last longer and donned a tracksuit that he began to wear every day. Aubrey essentially checked out on life, something he arguably did when he began to support himself by wearing a prosthetic nose in a thin role.

A week before the novel begins, the director who originally cast Aubrey for the BBC series offered to cast him in a sequel. Aubrey responded without enthusiasm. He plans to blow off the audition. He has little interest in resuming his life, much less his career.

The story opens with Lindsey Korine walking into Aubrey’s apartment and making himself at home. Lindsey bears a striking resemblance to Aubrey. Lindsey is married to a woman named Laurie but Lindsey’s Laurie is still alive. Lindsey lives in a nearby flat, or he did until he had a fight with Laurie two days earlier. She told him not to come back if he walked out and he hasn’t been home since. Lindsey was sleeping rough until he spotted Aubrey and followed him home.

Aubrey is surprised to see Lindsey in his apartment but makes no attempt to force him to leave. Instead, he tells Lindsey his story, although Aubrey and Lindsey often seem to be talking past each other. Aubrey eventually leaves his apartment and Lindsey takes up residence there.

For the rest of the novel, Aubrey and Lindsey live each other’s lives. Lindsey auditions for the role that was offered to Aubrey and nobody seems to notice that he isn’t Aubrey. In the meantime, Aubrey stumbles into Lindsey’s residence and Laurie mistakes him for her husband, as does her son.

Lindsey becomes obsessed with Aubrey. They meet a couple of times after Aubrey walks out of his apartment. Their meetings are mildly confrontational but they seem to have no interest in trading places again or resuming their original lives.

The playing of parts is the novel’s central theme. Aubrey refers to Lindsey’s son by the name of the character he was supposed to play in the role that will be given to Lindsey while Lindsey is playing the role of Aubrey. Although Laurie doesn’t seem to notice that Aubrey isn’t Lindsey, she eventually reveals her knowledge that he is playing the part of husband — a role that will inevitably end. Lindsey reads Aubrey’s books about acting and plays his part well until, reprising Aubrey’s early career, he has a breakdown of his own. Another actor who resembles Aubrey/Lindsey (and who showed up at the audition) lurks in the background. Every person who plays a role, the story seems to suggest, can be replaced by a different actor. The play's the thing, after all.

The narrative perspective in As If shifts between Aubrey and Lindsey. It is reasonable to wonder whether the two identities are occupied by the same man, but whether that man is Aubrey adopting the identity of Lindsey or Lindsey adopting the identity of Aubrey is unclear. This seems like fodder for a book club discussion.

The reader can guess at the novel’s meaning as well as (or more astutely than) I can. It might have something to do with the desire to escape one’s own life and to live someone else’s, particularly as a reaction to loss. I recommend the novella-length book not because I understand it, but because the story is replete with understated humor and offers a banquet for thought.

RECOMMENDED