Best woman A novel

In Dommu's heartwarming debut, a trans woman returns to Florida for her brother's wedding and finds more drama than she bargained for. Julia Rosenberg, 29, has been living her best life in New York City since she began transitioning four years earlier, and her family has been more accepting than she expected. But when Julia agrees to be the best woman in her 27-year-old brother Aiden's wedding, Jenna, the transphobic maid of honor, refuses to walk down the aisle with her. Aiden and his fiancée, Rachel, replace Jenna with Kim Cameron, a lesbian who went to college with Rachel, and who was Julia's high school crush. When Julia and Kim reconnect at the bridal store, Kim assumes that others in the wedding party have also been transphobic, and Julia doesn't correct her, relishing Kim's attention and sympathy. Julia can't sustain the lie forever, though, and eventually it threatens the women's growing mutual attraction. Dommu supplements the slapstick rom-com plot with Julia's strong voice and lucid self-reflections ("I'm just a person who used to show up in the world in one way that didn't work for me and made me fucking depressed"). This fun bit of fluff has surprising depth. Agent: Jessica Spitz, Janklow & Nesbit Assoc. (Sept.)