It's kind of a funny story. How I got to picking up Kun enkelit katsovat muualle by Salla Simukka (unfortunately not available in English but bare with me for the story).

In ninth grade, we were assigned with writing a paper comparing two novels. This project from years ago came back to me now that my younger brother is working on the same task and was asking me for advice. So, as the nifty, model sister that I am, I scavenged through our home server and discovered the document wedged between geography presentations and biology power points.

Before handing over the ten pages of writing from my past I decided it would be procreative to read through it myself also. I had chosen As Red As Blood by Salla Simukka as one of my books of interest. I had written a note about the author in which I gace a short overview of her other notable works. There, hidden within my mostly naïve teenage writing, I mentioned Kun enkelit katsovat muualle and also gave the impression that it is a rather great read. It must only be fair to say that I was due for taking a crack at the book myself.

And thus I reserved the novel from my library. As I went to pick it up, I was met by another surprise -the book was bound to yet another book, Minuuttivalssi, which apparently was set a couple of years after the former, and narrated by a different character.

In Kun enkelit katsovat muualle (which btw loosely translates to "when angles look away") the main character is a high school aged girl named Kirsikka, who is confident and happy in her identity as a lesbian teenager, but is not so sure of the orientation of her new crush, Susanna. She is head over heels for this beautiful, smart, piano prodigy in her health ed class, but is afraid of exposing her feelings toward her for the fear of scaring her away. She bundles up some courage and sets out to get to know this fascinating new figure in her life - but on a friendship basis. The more she learns about Susanna and the deeper their friendship grows, Kirsikka feels ever more distraught about not being able to confess her actual feelings.

The story is really interesting and beautifully written, giving an insight into the head of a girl who feels a big contradiction in her feelings: to tell Susanna and let her love run free at the risk of losing her, or to play it safe and push her own true feelings away? The young love warmed my heart yet the contingency gnawed at me making me think of how many times this must happen in the real world also.

In Minuuttivalssi, we follow Susanna's point of view a few years later, after graduating and moving away (to Turku where I live!) and starting a new phase in life. She struggles with hard questions for a nineteen-year-old, such as not knowing what she wants to do with her life or where is her relationship (spoiler alert: with Kirsikka) going? All the while learning to be independent, make new connections in new surroundings and understand the complexity of her own mind. The frustration, confusion and uncertainty translates so well that I began to take her feelings as my own. I really felt everything so viscerally as my own that I almost got uncomfortable reading, which is actually the only reason I gave the book only a four-star rating.

Anyhow, I thank my five-year-ago self for mentioning the book, my brother for leading me to pick it up now, and the copy at my library making me read both books. Depictions of rather everyday life on the surface, but pondering in depth at the questions and worries a young woman wrestles with, the two books were nice reads that I really did enjoy.

-Anna