Everyone dreams of a fresh start at some point in their lives. For many of us, college is the first chance we get to really step outside of the script that is pre-written for us and write our own story. But what happens when your dream school won’t actually let you be your true self? BFFs Lucy and Callie hit the road to try and find out if the perfect college for them exists and if their friendship can stand the test of time.

Like many good road trip novels, Lucy, Uncensored is a coming-of-age story that also incorporates the magic of theater. Theater-loving folks will delight in a queer retelling of Shakespeare’s The Tempest. Lucy and Callie work together to write, direct, and perform this play as part of their admission to college. In the end, the production they pull off leaves the reader feeling like listening to that RENT soundtrack again for the hundredth time.

Lucy is the kind of confident YA voice that you’d want your younger queer self to read: She has already figured out she is trans and is determined to find a place where she can finally be herself in a world that sometimes feels like it still wants her to use her deadname. The heart of the story focuses on how Lucy finds the strength to look beyond what is expected of her, even if that means jeopardizing her friendships and her relationship with her family.

This laugh-out-loud funny Young Adult gem will charm your socks off with a blend of Midwestern sass mixed with tender, coming-of-age queer realness. Sibling co-authors Mel and Teghan Hammond, Midwesterners themselves, have a way of pulling you in and making you feel like you are more than just a reader.

As Mel explains, just like her characters, the desire to leave home and find her own path was strong in her late teenage years, but she did eventually come back to the midwest. In her words, “I think many of us want to escape the box of where we grew up, and that’s why we wanted to write this road trip novel.”

For many in the LGBTQ+ community, finding our way is a rite of passage, but it can often be traumatic. Mel and Teghan flip the script by telling us a story of two young adults who make this journey in a safe, funny, and beautiful way. As someone who spent a large amount of time on cross-country road trips, reading this account of Lucy and Callie finding their way together with supportive but imperfect adults in their lives was deeply healing.

Indeed, Teghan explains that she hopes the book helps older readers “heal their inner child” and that everyone who reads this novel might feel inspired to “find or create spaces where they can express their full selves—plus be fearlessly and selflessly supportive of their friends.” Despite their play being censored, Callie’s indecisions, and a distracting love interest, the two friends eventually find one another again at the end, and pull off the performance of a lifetime. In a world that is banning books and silencing queer voices, this story of two young people standing up for what is right and doing so in a playful way is exactly what we need right now.