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Summary
After his parents’ breakup, Isak Valtersen retreats into survival mode. He spends most nights on Jonas’s couch, drowns out his thoughts with alcohol and noise, and learns how to be careful with himself in a world that already feels unstable. At home, his mother’s faith grows louder as her mental health deteriorates, and scripture becomes something Isak cannot escape. When she discovers the truth about him, fear and love twist into something damaging, and she sends him away to conversion therapy in the belief that it will “fix” him.
Isak returns to school at the start of year two changed. Quieter. Guarded. Carrying trauma he does not have the words for. He has learned how to disappear, how to flinch away from his own wants, how to survive by staying closed off.
But survival is not the same as living.As the people around him reach out, and as he meets someone who sees him in a way no one ever has before, Isak is faced with questions he is not sure he is ready to answer. Can he accept help without feeling weak. Can he trust love without fear. Can he unlearn everything he was taught to hate about himself.