My happy, periodic journey into gay YA continues, and my inner teenage self continues to be delighted. 
 This is in some ways a slightly unusual one, choosing to set itself in a Mexican-American community in the 80's and making use of a lot of the more classic tropes of American queer fiction (shame, class, violence), but giving everything a certain YA spin and a happy ending. As a result - and though this was presumably unintentional on the part of the author - I reached the end of this novel and rather felt as if I had read the YA antidote to Giovanni's Room and The City and the Pillar. Not that I was complaining. 
 Aristotle comes from a family that doesn't talk about things. He's angry, he's alone, he reads because he has nothing better to do. Then he meets Dante. Dante with his open happy family, his mother the psychiatrist, his father the English professor, who lounges around his room reading poetry because he thinks its the best thing in the world. 
 In many ways this is absolutely standard: two people whose differences complete one another, friendship growing into something more. The hinge of any relationship drama is usually the event/issue that keeps the lead characters apart, and I did feel the need to quibble here ("handwave, handwave, denial, something, something"), because it felt to me like the author was being deliberately misleading, for the sake of the plot, rather than grounding the actions of his protagonist in character. But it's a reasonably minor quibble, and the whole remains very affecting. 
 Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe is delightful, beautifully written, and - most importantly - touching. Highly recommend.