This Is Kind of an Epic Love Story

Overview

Kacen Callender's This Is Kind of an Epic Love Story centers on Nathan Bird, a teenage cinephile and budding screenwriter who has quietly decided that real-life romance never ends well. His skepticism traces back to his father's death, an event that left his mother struggling and left Nate convinced that avoiding heartbreak is safer than risking it.

Nate's romantic history is tangled with friendship: his ex-girlfriend Florence, once his best friend before and after they dated, remains a steady presence urging him to open himself up again. That push becomes harder to ignore when Oliver James Hernández, the boy Nate grew up with, moves back into his life after years away and after a childhood misunderstanding left things unresolved between them.

The novel follows Nate as he weighs old caution against new possibility, using the language and structure of the romantic comedies he loves to frame his own uncertain steps toward honesty.

A Coming-of-Age Story Told Through the Lens of Film

Callender frames the book explicitly as a genre exercise, filtering a queer coming-of-age story through the conventions of the rom-com Nate himself is obsessed with analyzing. That structural choice lets the novel comment on the tropes of happy endings even as it tries to earn one, giving the story a self-aware quality that distinguishes it from more straightforward YA romances.

The book also sits within a wave of contemporary YA that treats queer adolescence with the same lightness and comic timing traditionally reserved for straight teen romance narratives. Grief and family instability run underneath the humor, tying Nate's guardedness about love to the more serious loss he experienced as a child, and giving the central relationship stakes beyond the will-they-won't-they premise.

Why This Is Kind of an Epic Love Story Has Been Challenged

Objections to the novel have centered on its portrayal of a same-sex romantic relationship between teenage boys, with challengers typically citing the book's romantic and sexual content as inappropriate for school-age readers. Critics have also pointed to its depiction of teen relationships and physical intimacy more broadly as unsuitable for library shelves, a concern frequently raised alongside the LGBTQ+ subject matter itself. In this catalog, the title has been challenged in 6 states and 22 districts, reflecting its frequent inclusion in broader efforts to remove or restrict young adult books featuring queer protagonists and relationships.