Congratulations to Riss Neilson and Kelly Murphy! A Love Like the Sun and Together We Build are the 2026 Rhode Island Great Reads books and our submissions for the National Book Festival in Washington, DC on August 22nd, 2026. A Love Like the Sun is our adult selection and Together We Build is our kids selection.
About A Love Like the Sun
THE USA TODAY BESTSELLER!
“Perfect for fans of Abby Jimenez, Kennedy Ryan, and Carley Fortune (aka me).”
–Emily Henry
“Beautifully blending beloved tropes and smooth, often lyrical prose… Two lovers navigate challenges related to mental health, racial identity, grief, and a chronic illness” –NPR
Lifelong best friends spend a fateful summer discovering what might happen if they were to be something more in this radiant, heart-clenching adult debut.
Laniah Thompson is a homebody who craves privacy. Issac Jordan is internet famous and spends his days followed by paparazzi. She runs a small business with her mom in her hometown. He runs an international brand.
And they’ve been best friends since childhood.
When Issac comes home to Providence for the first time in months and discovers Laniah’s dream is slipping out of reach as she and her mom struggle to pay the bills at Wildly Green, their natural hair store, she refuses to take a dime from him. And so, he does what any self-respecting best friend would do: tells the world they’re dating.
Suddenly business is booming, and Laniah agrees to his ridiculous plan to pretend to be lovers for the course of the summer. Just long enough to catch the eye of an investor and get her dream back on track, like she helped him do so many years ago, he reminds her.
Too soon, though, Laniah knows she’s playing with fire, because for as long as they’ve been friends there’s an undeniable pull they’ve never given in to. And as the lines between art and life—real and pretend—blur, it becomes harder and harder to see where friendship ends and something else begins….
Told over the course of three sizzling summer months, A Love Like the Sun is about shared history, those who make us our bravest selves, and love in its many forms.
About the Author
Riss M. Neilson is the USA Bestselling Author of A Love Like the Sun. She’s a magna cum laude graduate of Rhode Island College, where she won the English department’s Jean Garrigue Award for creative writing. Her debut young adult novel, Deep in Providence, was a 2022 finalist for the New England Book Awards. She lives in Rhode Island with her two daughters and four fur babies, including a bunny named Michael Myers.
“I am incredibly honored to learn that A Love Like the Sun has been chosen to represent Rhode Island at the 2026 Library of Congress National Book Festival. This is the book of my heart, and I filled it with what I love most about our state, so to know that it’s being celebrated in such a special way feels like a gift.”
ABOUT THE NATIONAL BOOK FESTIVAL
The Library of Congress National Book Festival is an annual literary event that brings together best-selling authors and thousands of book fans for author talks, panel discussions, book signings and other activities. The Library of Congress National Book Festival will celebrate America 250 in 2026, featuring the creativity and inspiration of some of the nation’s most gifted authors on September 6th. The event showcases the importance of books and reading. Every year, the Library of Congress asks each state Center for the Book to select a title that represents the state’s literary landscape to highlight at the National Book Festival, these titles are part of the Great Reads From Great Places Initiative. The Rhode Island Center for the Book has chosen A Love Like the Sun and Together We Build as the Rhode Island Great Reads for 2026.