Savannah “Sav” Henry is the bisexual college sophomore at the heart of Haley Jakobson’s debut novel Old Enough
(2023), and she is caught between two worlds. A sexual assault survivor, tentatively embracing her queer identity, Sav begins the story as someone outwardly content yet understandably conflicted. She is friendly but reserved, open about her sexuality yet guarded about her past.
At college, Sav has found solace in a vibrant queer friend group who tease her affectionately about her crush on classmate Wes. These relationships offer her a sense of belonging she’s never experienced before. Yet while Sav readily listens to her friends’ struggles, she avoids sharing her own, particularly anything related to Izzie, her childhood best friend, who represents a life that now feels foreign. Sav struggles to reconcile who she used to be with the person she’s becoming at school. She feels like she isn’t fully herself with anyone: not with Izzie, who feels like she belongs to Sav’s past life, and not with her college friends, who only know the “new” Sav, who doesn’t feel quite authentic either. Sav is caught in the liminal space between them, and for much of the novel, she’s working out who, exactly, she wants to be.
Amid this uncertainty, Sav’s bisexuality remains her one unwavering truth. From the novel’s opening, she’s openly — and happily — bi, expressing romantic and sexual interest in characters across genders, from a musician named Nova, to her coworker Matt, and including her classmate, Wes. Her sexual identity, first explored during a high school rift with Izzie, became a cornerstone of self-discovery — even if its emergence coincided with the fracture in that foundational friendship. Though they eventually reconciled, their bond never fully healed, a tension that crescendos when Izzie’s engagement forces Sav to confront her abuser, who will attend the wedding.
As the ceremony looms, Sav’s internal dialogue sharpens into urgent questions: What does healing truly mean for survivors? Can justice exist without confrontation? How does one build a life after trauma? Jakobson renders Sav’s duality with tenderness — her protagonist is both resilient and fragile, certain in her queerness yet adrift in her relationships. Old Enough doesn’t offer easy answers, but through Sav, it illuminates the messy, nonlinear path of self-reclamation.