From the award-winning author of Songs in Ursa Major comes an epic, decade-spanning love story that blazes through the worlds of acting and comedy, and charts a connection so powerful it might just break space and time itself.

“The truth is there’s no such thing as a normal life. There’s just the time you get and how you spend it.”

In the summer of 2000, AJ Graves dreams of writing for Saturday Night Live; instead, she’s stuck working in a video rental store, with slim odds of escaping her small Massachusetts town. Then in walks Noah Drew, the enigmatic and intense scion of the Drew acting dynasty, and her life changes forever. Despite wildly different upbringings, the two forge a deep, cosmic bond, first as friends, then as acting partners—until one day, Noah disappears without a word.

Seven years later, in New York City, AJ is shocked to find herself cast in the same intergalactic TV production as Noah, by then a well-known Hollywood heartthrob. As their on-screen characters grow closer every day, the lines between reality and acting begin to blur. Unable to stay away from each other, AJ and Noah are forced to confront the truth of what happened years ago—and the devastating secret that will send their lives careening apart, even as fate continues to draw them together.

Blending unforgettable characters, explosive chemistry and yearning, and profound emotion, Into the Blue is a journey unlike any other—one that asks: What does it mean to diverge from the script to forge your own story?

Into the Blue is a hard book to describe. It’s a story of love and acting, geekiness and intensity and fandoms, commitment and abandonment, and so much more. There are incredibly funny moments, and scenes so raw that I felt as though my heart had been pulled out and stomped on.

At age seventeen, AJ Graves works at a video rental store in her small Berkshires town, obsessed with old movies and classic cult TV, especially the 60s-era improvisational sci-fi series, Astronauticals. A short-lived, one-of-a-kind series, the show centered on a space crew and their adventures, but with scenes completely improvised. One of the actors, Eudora Drew, is local to AJ’s town, and her character Glimmette especially fascinates AJ. When Eudora’s nephew Noah, four years older than AJ and a former classmate of her big brother, walks into the store to start a summer job alongside her, AJ’s hackles are raised. He must clearly be slumming it — he’s a descendant of the Drew acting dynasty, and certainly doesn’t need a minimum wage job to support himself.

As the summer progress, though, AJ and Noah bond over Astronauticals and other movies, and when Noah brings her by the Drew mansion, she meets Eudora — who immediately insists that she’s going to train AJ and Noah. AJ dreams of a comedy writing career, but Eudora demands that she and Noah learn her improv and acting methods, and puts them through a rigorous, intensive program that somehow forges an intense, rare connection between them. As they “play” together all summer, they become highly attuned to one another’s thoughts and feelings, and it goes way beyond acting. And yet, something goes wrong, and one day Noah is just gone, and AJ find herself shut out by Eudora as well. Bereft and heart-broken, she has no choice but to throw herself into finishing school and getting on with her future.

Years later, as AJ works in New York as a writer with an improv/comedy troupe, Noah shows up… but in the intervening years, Noah has become a star with an Oscar nomination and huge movie roles to his credit. His appearance at the improv center has a purpose: He’s slated to be a part of an Astronauticals reboot, to be called Into the Blue… and with it going into production at the time of the writers’ strike, it’ll have a novel approach. While the general story line and premise are layed out, the episodes themselves will be completely improvised. To AJ’s shock, she’s cast in the show as well, and as the production progresses, it becomes clear that she’ll become the major female lead and love interest for Noah’s character.

The intense connection between AJ and Noah sparks back to life — clearly, it had never really died out. Yet AJ is still devastated by his abandonment years earlier and the silence since then, and is unwilling to let him back in. But their bond is so powerful that it can’t be avoided forever, and their relationship burns bright… until certain truths push them apart once again.

It’s hard to discuss this book without giving details away, and that would be a shame. The intensity and power of the connection between AJ and Noah drives the plot forward, and there has to be a very good reason for the estrangements that continue to drive them into separate lives… and there is, but that doesn’t lessen the impact or help AJ or Noah forget what’s between them.

There are lighter moments too — the descriptions of fandoms and cons and obsessions over pop culture are all really well done. I was reminded throughout of Firefly… which was reinforced later in the book when I came across this brief line:

But as Ana, such sounds broke from her as to burn the land and boil the sea.

Powerful moment, and those particular words really drive it home. (IYKYK)