Rise to the Sun

Rise to the Sun (2021) by Leah Johnson (You Should See Me In a Crown) is a contemporary sapphic YA romance that takes place over the three days of a summer music festival. Both Olivia and Toni are from the Indianapolis area, but they don’t know each other.

Olivia goes to the festival with her best friend, Imani, to get away from the mess she’s made of her life and because live music is like church to her. Toni goes to the festival to figure out what’s next in her life, because she’s still grieving the sudden death of her father and she’s not sure that going to Indiana University in the fall is what she wants.

Olivia has made a promise to Imani that this will be a best friends weekend–she has a habit of falling for someone and forgetting everyone else–and when she meets Toni, who is there with her festival-friend Peter–she’s thrilled because there’s someone for Imani, too. Olivia and Toni team up as a duo in the amateur competition and so that Toni can help Olivia find all of the “golden apples” to win a car, since Toni has been going to the festival since she was little and can spot the details others might not.

I enjoyed the characters, though Olivia was needy and self-absorbed, and Toni was the stereotypical ice princess who withdraws in her grief. But they were good together. And it’s a love letter to live music:

. . .somewhere in the light-years of space between the spiritual and the scientific, between the known and the ineffable, there’s live music.

Leah Johnson, Rise With the Sun

Johnson does deal with some difficult topics–panic attacks, grief, death due to gun violence, image sharing without consent, but it’s all handled with care and in a healthy way. Both Olivia and Toni grow and change by knowing the other.

It was a sweet read, perfect for queer teens and music lovers, with two unique, resilient black female characters. And there was no anti-fat bias that I could detect.