By: Kate Butler Emery Hayes has always felt at home behind the counter of the Blue Door Café. At nineteen, she's spent years perfecting the art of a perfect latte and memorizing the orders of regulars who feel more like family than customers. But while she loves the café, everyone else seems to think she's wasting her potential, her mom, her best friend, even the people who ask, What do you really want to do? Then Leo walks in. A free-spirited trans artist with paint-stained hands and a heart full of dreams, Leo is everything Emery isn't - bold, unapologetic, unafraid to chase the life he wants. And when he asks her to leave it all behind to move across the country with him, Emery is forced to face the question she's been avoiding: Is she really happy staying where she is, or has she just been too afraid to want more? With an amateur barista competition on the horizon, old friends resurfacing, and the weight of expectations pressing down on her, Emery has to make a choice: follow her first love into the unknown, or fight for the dream she's only just begun to admit she has: one where the Blue Door Café isn't just her job, but her future. A story about love, self-discovery, and the choices that shape us, Blue Door Café is a heartfelt coming-of-age novel about finding the courage to step through the doors that scare us the most.
