Under Shifting Stars

Clare and Audrey desperately miss their brother Adam. He was killed in a car crash while on his way to pick up Audrey from a karate lesson, leaving her feeling that his death is her fault because she got impatient and wanted to leave the lesson early. Ever since then, Audrey and her sister have been drifting apart, much to their parents’ disappointment and frustration.
Audrey is feeling sad, frustrated, and anxious. She is sad because she feels the rift growing between her and her sister, and she is frustrated because she doesn’t know how to fix it. She is anxious because she is trying to move from the private school that caters to students with special needs back to the public school to be with Clare, but nobody seems to think it’s a good idea except for her. It doesn’t help that her therapist has never given her an official diagnosis to explain what makes her different from all the neurotypical people in her life. All she wants is for her family to feel whole again. The one good thing that happens in the meantime is that she meets a boy named Calvin who helps her to come out of her shell and learn that friendships can be just as important as family.

Clare, on the other hand, is angry. She is angry at Audrey for her brother’s death. She is angry at the people who used to be her friends because they have become her bullies. She is angry at her parents because they always seem to care more about Audrey than her. And she’s scared because she is feeling things that she has no idea how to process. While rummaging through her brother’s things, she finds his old phone, some videos of him with his girlfriend, and some of his old clothes that she then starts to wear to school. As the school year moves on, Clare begins to question her approach to gender and sexuality, eventually befriending a nonbinary student named Taylor in the process.

Clare’s confusion, as well as her journey to understanding her gender and sexuality, is sensitively portrayed, and even the few moments containing a more didactic examination of labels are still quite nuanced, avoiding a universal approach to identity development. Gender nonconformity and queerness are treated with respect throughout the narrative, avoiding a reliance on stereotypes. Audrey is a well-rounded individual within the story as well, and her narrative perspective is differentiated from Clare’s through a lack of quotation marks to highlight dialogue versus internal monologue. Although this may be confusing for some readers, it does mirror what is likely some of the internal confusion Audrey experiences while trying to focus on certain conversations and tasks each day.

Latos covers a lot of ground in the novel, from friendships to crushes, from bullying to art therapy, from neurodiversity to gender and sexual diversity. Although the cast of characters is mostly white, other intersectional identities make for a narrative that will appeal to readers from many different backgrounds. Under Shifting Stars is a heartbreaking, complicated, hopeful story that explores the complex ways of existing—not only as teenagers, but as neurodiverse and gender nonconforming individuals—in a world that prizes normalcy.