More Happy Than Not

About More Happy Than Not

More Happy Than Not is the debut novel of Adam Silvera, first published by Soho Teen in 2015. It is set in a near-future Bronx where the Leteo Institute offers a revolutionary but controversial service: memory alteration. For a fee, they can suppress or erase specific memories — grief, trauma, or, as one of the novel's central questions asks, an identity you've been taught to be ashamed of.

The protagonist is Aaron Soto, sixteen, living with his mother and brother in a small apartment in the Bronx. His father died by suicide not long ago, and Aaron is trying to hold himself together with the tools available to him: his neighborhood, his girlfriend Genevieve, his tight circle of friends. When Thomas moves into the neighborhood, something begins to shift inside Aaron — feelings he doesn't have language for yet, and that the world around him has given him every reason to suppress.

The Memory Procedure and What It Means

The Leteo Institute's memory-altering procedure is the novel's speculative element, but it functions less as science fiction than as a metaphor with teeth. Conversion therapy, reparative therapy, the cultural and familial pressure to simply not be queer — all of it is mapped onto the Leteo procedure with clarity. Aaron isn't just thinking about erasing his feelings; he's thinking about erasing himself.

Silvera writes the Bronx with specificity and affection. The neighborhood is fully realized: the corner stores, the building stairwells, the particular quality of summer heat. Aaron's voice is funny and vulnerable in equal measure. The novel is genuinely heartbreaking at several points, and it earns those moments through consistent, careful character work in the chapters before them.

The book won the Lambda Literary Award and has been recognized by the American Library Association, the Stonewall Book Award committee, and numerous other organizations. Silvera's debut announced a significant voice in young adult literature — one committed to exploring the experience of LGBTQ+ young people in communities where that identity is complicated by poverty, family expectation, and religion.

Why It Has Been Banned

More Happy Than Not is one of the most heavily banned of Adam Silvera's novels, removed from 19 school districts across 8 states: Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Texas, Virginia, Wisconsin, Tennessee, and the Department of Defense Education Activity. Challenges consistently cite the book's LGBTQ+ content and its depiction of a same-sex relationship.

The book does not contain explicit sexual content. What it contains is an honest portrayal of a young man coming to understand who he is, and the cost of being taught — by every institution around him — that who he is is wrong. Banning it from school libraries doesn't eliminate the experiences it describes. It eliminates one of the places where a teenager living those experiences might find them reflected and validated.