Come Home to My Heart, Riley Redgate
Come Home to My Heart, Riley Redgate
List: $27.99 | Sale: $19.59
Club: $13.99

Come Home to My Heart

Author: Riley Redgate

Narrator: Gail Shalan, Natalie Naudus

Unabridged: 9 hr 35 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 09/09/2025


Synopsis

Gorgeous in its sincerity and its precision—in its raw, honest depiction of what it feels like to be a gay teen in a world that says that you don’t deserve a home.

Gloria Forman and Xia Harper go to the same high school in a small South Carolina town, but they couldn’t be more different. While Gloria is part of the popular, Christian crowd, Xia sleeps through class, antagonizes anyone who dares talk to her, and buries herself in books that help her pretend she’s somewhere else—anywhere that being lesbian wouldn’t be a waking nightmare.

When the two form an accidental friendship, they begin noticing each other in ways they promised themselves they'd avoid. After all, Xia’s isolation is self-imposed for a reason, and the last thing Gloria needs is more upheaval, especially after her parents kicked her out of the house for being gay. Ever since, she has spent her nights under the stage in the school auditorium and her days terrified of being discovered.

Xia just wants to keep her head down until the end of senior year. Gloria just wants to keep her living situation quiet until her parents come around. But as their feelings for each other intensify and the truths they've hidden work their way to the surface, what they truly want will change forever.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Rachel on February 01, 2025

My girlfriend got the ARC of this and I finished it over the course of two days. This is the type of book I wish so badly I could give to myself ten years ago to help me survive highschool. I resonated so strongly with both characters and felt seen in ways I realized a younger me needed too. Definit......more

Goodreads review by this_eel on October 30, 2024

Having a hard time putting together coherence because this is my favorite Riley Redgate so far and it broke me. Religious rupture, family collapse, closeted fear, youth homelessness, queer community, tender and sincere teen romance. Absolutely wonderful characters, handled with care. This is not a p......more

Goodreads review by tillie on June 18, 2025

holy shit this book. i read the description right before i started it and i was like hmmm this seems like it’s gonna be intense but ppl like it and i enjoyed one of the authors books once. welp it was so intense and not something i’d normally read but god was it beautiful. like, the writing was some......more

Goodreads review by lea on June 03, 2025

Read this in one sitting. Tears may have been shed.......more

Goodreads review by The Bookish Elf on May 10, 2025

Riley Redgate's Come Home to My Heart is one of those rare novels that manages to capture both the crushing weight of teenage displacement and the ethereal lightness of first love. As someone who has followed Redgate's work since Seven Ways We Lie, I can confidently say this is her most mature and e......more


Quotes

A palpably genuine and romantic queer coming-of-age story.—Kirkus Reviews, STARRED

A realistic portrait of the plight of homeless queer youth across the United States as well as a beautiful story of first love, this novel is great for high schoolers or fans of a wholesome, ­romantic tearjerker.—School Library Journal

Riley Redgate writes with a master storyteller’s hand about the intersecting struggles of family, faith, and queer love in the rural South. This lyrical, moving book gripped my heart from the opening page and still hasn’t let go. It never will.—Jeff Zentner, award-winning author of The Serpent King