I Think I Love You

Gr 8 Up–Rising junior Emma Hansen just wants to fall in love. Sophia Kingsley wants nothing to do with it, not least because they’re the only two queer girls in their grade and everyone wants them to date. When Sophia returns to New York City in June from a year in Paris, she finds Emma and her friends planning to film a bisexual romcom for the NYC-LA Film Festival. Emma and Sophia’s dispute over romance causes the group to splinter in two. Of course, this doesn’t stop them from living out their own real-life romcom—and not just by scheming to get their best friends together, either. This contemporary queer romance is a fun exploration of romantic comedy tropes. It does, however, fail in its perceived purpose to deconstruct them and thus leaves the characters feeling one-dimensional. Emma is bisexual (her ethnicity isn’t specified) and her role as co-narrator alongside Sophia, a white lesbian, demonstrates two of the paths a queer teen’s life may take. The story is interspersed with excerpts from Emma’s film notes and scripts, which provide insight into the filmmaking process.