Make Room For Love is a romantic comedy novel by Darcy Liao (they/them). The audiobook is narrated by Natalie Naudus (who is also bi) and site favorite Nicky Endres. Make Room for Love is their debut novel.
The book focuses on a pair of characters: Mira Levin, a trans biracial grad student working on unionizing at a university in New York, and Isabel, a butch electrician still grieving the tragic loss of her older sister. The two meet when Mira, looking to blow off some steam after a breakup with a financially/emotionally abusive ex, runs into said ex when she leaves a dance club. After Isabel scares him off, Mira reveals she is couch surfing with a friend, as she moved out from the ex but cannot afford to live anywhere else. Isabel offers her second bedroom to Mira at a discount until she can get back on her feet. Mira is relieved, but is surprised to find herself drawn to Isabel, as she thought she was straight.
This entry will focus on the character of Mira. Mira is smart, caring, understanding, funny, sincere, thoughtful, insightful, and kind. She is also an excellent and beloved teacher and an effective organizer in the effort for the grad students to form a union to get a living wage and better working conditions. She is a well-developed character, with plenty of strengths, hopes, dreams, and fears as well as flaws. She makes enough choices, both good and bad, and is informed by her past and present to make her very human.
As far as bi representation, Mira’s development is both realistic and still entertaining. She begins the story believing she is straight, but then, through her attraction to Isabel, realizes that it may be something more, and it becomes a bi epiphany. She is not in any rush to label herself, but in an endearing conversation with a friend in Central Park, she realizes that her admiration for previous women in her life was more than platonic, so Isabel is not just some sole exception. Mira also knows Isabel will not pressure her due to their living situation despite her feelings for Mira, so the two have a mature conversation about how to explore their attraction, their expectations, and taking things slow. Mira does use the “bi” label for herself and has no problem bringing this into her identity or introducing Isabel as a girlfriend to her friends. And while her bisexuality is an important revelation to the story, it is not the defining aspect of her growth, as she has other narratives and trials that do not set her queerness as a source of conflict. So going from thinking she was straight to realizing and celebrating that she is bi, as well as other personal successes in the plot, makes for a big arc for Mira!
Make Room For Love was well received upon its release, including a nomination for Best Romance in the 2024 Reddit RomanceBooks Awards and a feature on the Best of the Best poll from I Heart Sapphic Fiction.
Make Room For Love is some ultra-rare representation of a bi trans woman of color as a nuanced and lovable rom-com lead in a novel. The book is about more than their bi epiphany, but it is still a central part of her identity in addition to her other personal developments. It is a joyful read and an important marker of bi representation in modern literature.