At seventeen, Chase Marino believes adulthood will arrive with the keys to his first car. Then he meets Claire Davenport, and first love changes the course of his life.
In late-1970s suburban New Jersey, Chase and Claire imagine college, marriage, and a future together. But distance, family pressure, and one devastating choice pull them apart. Chase moves forward, yet some loves leave a mark time cannot erase.
Years later, working as a page in the exhilarating world of Manhattan television, Chase meets Sophia Ivanova, a Russian Olympic silver medalist whose polished public image conceals a life she did not choose. Drawn to her strength, vulnerability, and desperate desire for freedom, Chase risks everything to help her defect.
The attempt fails.
Haunted by the possibility that he may have cost Sophia everything, Chase builds a new life in Hollywood. Success comes quickly-but the further he rises, the more he begins to question what ambition has cost him and how much of himself he has lost along the way.
Spanning first love, 1980s television, Cold War intrigue, and the seductive promise of Hollywood success, Is It You? is a character-driven novel about love, loss, timing, ambition, and the choices that shape a life long after the moment has passed.
Because some loves don't end when they're lost. They stay-shaping who we become, and who we still have a chance to become.