Plot Summary
Wheels Clip on the Track
A midnight dirt bike race outside Gville ends with Taylor's2 wheel clipping Huckslee's,1 sending both boys sprawling in the mud. Instead of checking on each other, they trade fists. Taylor2 spits a vile lie about Huck's1 father6 being a predatory bishop, and Huck1 launches at him with real fury. Their friend Christian3 drags them apart.
What neither can say aloud is why they hate each other: three years earlier, a stolen kiss in eighth grade shattered a friendship. Now the cruelest irony looms. Tomorrow Huck's1 widowed father, Aaron,6 marries Taylor's2 estranged mother, Maisie.7 The boys who cannot stop bruising each other are about to share a bathroom, a house, and a last name for one long year.
The opening weaponizes intimacy as violence, a pattern the whole novel will interrogate. Taylor's slur against Aaron is calculated to wound because he knows exactly what Huck treasures, revealing how thoroughly these two have studied each other. Their fists are a corrupted language of the closeness they once had. Wiley establishes the enemies-to-lovers engine through dramatic irony: the reader senses attraction beneath aggression before the characters admit it. The impending forced-proximity wedding converts private hatred into daily domestic pressure, raising stakes. The motocross setting doubles as metaphor, control and recklessness colliding, foreshadowing that these boys will keep hurting themselves chasing the same adrenaline they feel near each other.
A Country Called Delaware
Forced to host Taylor2 while their parents honeymoon, Huck1 notices dark fingerprint bruises on Taylor's2 arm and realizes with nausea that he cannot have caused all of them. That night he shows Taylor2 the dirt bike track behind the house, land his late mother once used for horses.
Half joking, Huck1 christens the track Delaware, a made-up place where nothing that happens at school or home counts, where they can just be Taylor2 and Huck.1 Taylor2 pretends to refuse, then roars past on his yellow bike, grinning. For one week they trade grief about their mothers, adopt a scruffy cat named Lasagna, and glimpse the friendship they buried. It cannot last, but the truce plants a seed.
Delaware is the book's central symbol, a self-authored sanctuary from a world that criminalizes who they are. Naming a fictional safe country literalizes the queer necessity of building spaces that do not exist on official maps. The bruises introduce Taylor's abuse without explaining it, letting the reader outpace Huck's understanding. Wiley uses shared maternal loss as the bridge that momentarily dissolves antagonism, suggesting their cruelty was always displaced pain. The cat becomes a small shared responsibility, a rehearsal for tenderness. Crucially, the truce is fragile by design, because neither boy yet has language for wanting the other, and fear still rules them both.
The Broken Arm
Months of pranks and simmering tension explode when a drunk Taylor2 spots an explicit video Huck1 recorded for Royce,10 a boy from a rival school. They wrestle for the phone. When Huck1 threatens to expose the kiss they shared in eighth grade, Taylor2 snaps, twisting Huck's1 arm until it fractures and hurling a homophobic slur.
At the hospital, Aaron6 accepts Huck's1 lie about slipping, but Taylor2 cannot stomach it. Refusing to become his own abusive father, he blurts the truth: he did it. Both boys are grounded indefinitely, motocross revoked. The confession costs Taylor2 nothing he values more than the shame of watching Huck1 cradle a broken limb he caused.
This is the nadir of Part One's cruelty and the first crack in Taylor's mask. His refusal to let Huck lie for him marks a moral inflection: he would rather be punished than mirror his father. The slur is self-protective camouflage, a boy attacking in another what he fears in himself. Wiley threads dramatic irony expertly, since the reader now suspects Taylor's rage is thwarted desire. The broken arm also jeopardizes Huck's football scholarship, tying emotional violence to material consequence. Guilt becomes the engine that will slowly humanize Taylor, forcing accountability into a character who has only ever known survival through concealment and lashing out.
The Bike Was Never It
Late at night Taylor2 leads Huck1 back to Delaware and apologizes, then silences Huck's1 bitterness by kissing him. When Huck1 responds, Taylor2 panics and calls it a mistake. Pressed, he finally explains the eighth-grade fallout: after their bleacher kiss, his homophobic father threatened to strip his motocross sponsorship, his bike, his only escape route, if he ever suspected Taylor2 liked boys.
So Taylor2 manufactured hatred to protect his ticket out of town. Huck,1 wounded, hears only that years of torment were traded for a dirt bike. Furious, he chokes Taylor2 against the dark, then recoils in horror when Taylor2 simply lets him, unresisting. Huck1 orders him to stay away.
The chapter reframes the entire feud as coerced self-erasure. Taylor's cruelty was a survival strategy authored by a violent father, but Wiley refuses to let explanation equal absolution, and Huck's anger is legitimate. The scene stages the tragic mismatch of trauma responses: Taylor confesses to earn forgiveness, Huck hears betrayal. The choking moment is chilling because Taylor accepts it, revealing a boy who believes he deserves punishment, an internalized conviction of worthlessness. Delaware, meant as sanctuary, becomes the site of another wound, demonstrating that safe spaces cannot function until both people stop performing. Desire and fear remain fused, unresolvable while their father's shadow governs Taylor's choices.
Drowning in the Pool
During winter break Taylor2 finds Huck1 swimming alone in the closed school pool. What begins as taunting becomes something feverish: Taylor2 repeatedly holds Huck1 under, then breathes life back into him with his mouth, until fighting turns to letting go.
Underwater, Huck1 stops resisting the darkness he has fought for years and gives in, and the two get each other off in the water. For Huck,1 oxygen-starved and euphoric, it is the freest he has felt since his mother died. He falls asleep afterward, sleeping soundly for the first time in months. He wakes in Taylor's2 bed the next morning to a very different Taylor.2
Wiley renders breath play as a loaded metaphor for control and release, the two forces that define both boys. Huck, suffocated by expectation and closeted perfectionism, experiences relinquishing control as ecstatic, a dangerous conflation of intimacy with self-annihilation that foreshadows his mental health crisis. The pool becomes their second recurring water motif, sites where masks dissolve. For Taylor, initiating rather than merely reacting is a tentative claiming of desire. Yet the encounter's intensity outruns his readiness, setting up the morning-after rupture. The scene is erotic and ominous at once, showing how their attraction keeps arriving wrapped in near-catastrophe, pleasure inseparable from the risk of losing themselves entirely.
The Car and the Curtain
After the pool, Taylor2 freezes when Huck1 tries to touch him and insists he is not gay, wounding Huck1 again. On New Year's Eve, Maisie7 catches Taylor2 smoking weed and Aaron6 throws him out. Enraged and drunk, Taylor2 steals Huck's1 car and drives to his father's trailer, where the old man beats him nearly to death, leaving a facial scar. Months later comes prom.
Huck1 secretly wins the motocross scholarship race and transfers the prize to Taylor.2 But jealousy over Huck's1 date, Royce,10 drives Taylor2 to yank open a stage curtain, exposing Huck1 kissing another boy before the entire senior class and Aaron.6 Devastated, Huck1 goes home and overdoses. Taylor2 breaks his own collarbone forcing his way in and saves him.
Part One's catastrophic climax braids every thread into consequence. Taylor's father delivers the abuse Taylor has spent years hiding, and the crash is later mythologized to cover paternal violence, showing how thoroughly he protects a man who nearly kills him. The curtain is Taylor's cruelest act, jealousy weaponized into public outing, the exact violation queer people fear most. Huck's overdose reframes the entire narrative: his brittle perfection was always a mask over suicidal despair. Yet Wiley complicates blame, since Huck later insists the crisis was already gathering. Taylor's rescue, breaking himself to save the boy he broke, inaugurates the guilt and love that will drive Part Two.
Four Years, One Track
Four years later, Huck1 has built a new life in California with his grandparents,14 playing football at Berkeley, openly gay, still haunted. A call about Aaron's6 bladder cancer forces him home to Utah, the state where he nearly died. Riding his old bike in the snow, he is ambushed by a scarred, pink-tipped Taylor,2 now a rising freestyle motocross performer with his best friend Christian.3
Their reunion curdles fast: at lunch Taylor2 reveals that Salem4 is dating Logan,5 then Huck1 learns from Aaron6 that after prom, a drunk Taylor2 beat him bloody on the front lawn the night Taylor's2 own father died. Enraged, Huck1 chokes Taylor2 against a truck, and Taylor,2 again, does not fight back.
The time jump resets the board while preserving the wound. Huck's California success is exposed as another mask, football a socially safe obsession replacing the truth he still cannot fully inhabit. Returning to Utah literalizes the impossibility of outrunning trauma. Taylor's transformation, sober, tattooed, therapy-worn, signals genuine change, yet the revelation of the lawn assault shows the past cannot simply be skipped. Once more Taylor accepts strangulation without defense, his death wish surfacing as penance. Wiley stages the reunion as recursion: the same violence, the same postures, but now weighted by four years of watching each other from afar. Love and unfinished grief are indistinguishable here.
The Punch at the Party
At the Big BIC monster truck rally, Huck1 watches Taylor2 and Christian3 perform death-defying stunts, including a Globe of Death, and learns their brand donates to suicide prevention, a phrase that guts him. Later, drinking at a staff afterparty while Taylor2 stays sober, Huck1 seethes as Taylor2 drapes himself over Logan,5 touching him constantly.
Provoked, Taylor2 kisses Logan5 full on the mouth just to see Huck1 react. Huck's1 fist answers instantly, knocking Taylor2 out cold, and Christian3 puts Huck1 in a chokehold. The confrontation exposes what neither will name: Huck's1 rage has nothing to do with Logan5 and everything to do with wanting to be the one Taylor2 touches.
Wiley inverts the earlier power dynamic, letting Huck be the one who loses control, humanizing his jealousy rather than sanctifying him. Taylor's provocative kiss is diagnostic, a deliberate experiment to measure whether Huck still wants him, and the punch is the answer he craves. The suicide-prevention detail lands as bitter irony and quiet grace, revealing Taylor has built his public life around the cause his cruelty once made personal. The scene demonstrates how physical aggression remains their default vocabulary for desire, but the reader sees the vocabulary shifting: Huck now fights over Taylor, not merely with him. Possessiveness becomes an unwilling confession of feeling.
The Cabin Reckoning
Snowbound at Logan's5 family cabin with Salem4 and Logan,5 the four play a suggestive card game that pries loose secrets, culminating in the question about being in love. Taylor2 drinks; Huck1 does not. Later Taylor2 climbs atop Huck,1 forcing him to finally listen, apologizing and admitting his father broke his body for years, that he was drunk and dissociating during their past encounters.
When Taylor2 tries again to broach prom and uses the word cancer carelessly, Huck's1 rage detonates. He makes Taylor2 kneel and takes his throat roughly, then leaves him wrecked on the floor, mirroring the abandonment Taylor2 once inflicted. Huck1 flees, ashamed of the cruelty he did not know he carried.
The cabin is a pressure cooker of forced intimacy, and the game functions as ritualized confession, lowering defenses through play. Taylor's disclosure of paternal abuse recontextualizes his sexual freezing as trauma, not rejection. But Wiley refuses redemptive neatness: Huck, the wronged party, discovers his own capacity for domination and degradation, becoming momentarily the very thing he fears. The scene is a mirror held to both, revealing that trauma can turn victims into aggressors given the right wound. Huck's shame afterward is the crucial pivot, because unlike the boys they were, he now recognizes harm as he inflicts it. Accountability, painfully, begins to circulate in both directions.
The Scholarship He Gave Away
On St. Patrick's Day, Huck1 meets Royce10 at the Prospector, the dive bar where Taylor2 and Christian3 now work. Taylor,2 provoked, torments them, then Huck1 drinks himself into a stupor. Taylor2 finds him passed out and freezing in a parking lot, terrified he has killed him again, and drives him home.
That night, a call from the motorsport park exposes the buried truth to Huck1 all over again: after winning the race, Huck1 had transferred the entire scholarship to Taylor,2 who then lost it to jail time. In Taylor's2 bed, the two finally trade full confessions, Taylor2 admitting years of love, Huck1 admitting the overdose was already coming. They reconcile and sleep tangled together.
The scholarship revelation reframes Huck's teenage generosity as a love letter Taylor never knew to read, deepening the tragedy of their lost years. Wiley uses alcohol as the recurring solvent that both endangers and unmasks, Taylor's sobriety contrasted against Huck's newer drinking problem, a role reversal underscoring that neither is purely victim or savior. The mutual confession finally dismantles the blame economy that has governed them: Huck absolves Taylor of sole responsibility for the overdose, an act of grace that frees them both. Their first tender night together, following so much water and violence, signals that intimacy might survive outside crisis. The mask, at last, is set down.
Ninety-Day Trial
At a party celebrating Taylor2 winning a Nitro Fuel qualifier over Christian,3 twin blows land. Matty9 announces he is drafted to Arizona and moving away with his daughter Hannah,11 gutting Xed,8 who has helped raise her. And Huck1 reveals he is drafted to the Baltimore Ravens, clear across the country.
Taylor2 and Huck,1 only a week into loving each other openly, confront an expiration date. Huck1 fears asking Taylor,2 who needs constant physical closeness, to endure long distance. In a bathroom, they agree to a ninety-day trial through the summer, refusing to let the relationship die before it truly begins. The clock starts ticking on everything.
Wiley introduces external stakes that neither character caused, shifting conflict from interpersonal cruelty to structural circumstance, the mundane brutality of careers pulling lovers apart. The parallel of Xed and Matty foreshadows the ache of separation, a mirror couple showing what unspoken love loses to distance. Huck's reluctance to ask Taylor to wait reflects genuine emotional maturity, an awareness of Taylor's attachment needs, yet it also encodes his persistent fear that he is unworthy of permanence. The ninety-day framing turns the summer into a countdown, lending every subsequent scene the poignancy of borrowed time. Love, newly won, is immediately shadowed by geography.
Waterfall Consummation
On the annual Colorado camping trip with the whole friend group, chaos reigns: mushroom trips, a naked cliff dive, a night of communal cuddling in one tent. Huck1 spends the drive teasing Taylor2 over text and stewing over Owen, a friend eyeing him.
When Taylor2 reveals he has been wearing a plug all day in anticipation, Huck1 pulls him behind a waterfall and they finally have sex, Taylor's2 first time with a man handled with tenderness rather than the roughness of their past. Afterward, back at camp, the trip forces Huck's1 hand: Logan5 discovers the relationship, straining a lifelong friendship Huck1 has always kept at arm's length.
The waterfall completes the water trilogy, pool and shower and now falls, transforming their recurring element from danger into consecration. Wiley deliberately contrasts this gentle first time with the coerced encounters of their past, marking how far accountability has carried them. The plug detail signals Taylor's active, joyful consent, reclaiming agency his father once stole. Yet the group setting keeps intimacy communal and precarious, and Logan's discovery introduces the novel's quieter conflict: Huck's compulsive secrecy corrodes even his safest bonds. The chapter argues that coming out is not a single event but a series of terrifying disclosures, each risking a relationship Huck has spent his life protecting through concealment.
The Drive to California
Missing Huck1 during their separation, Taylor2 road-trips fifteen hours alone to surprise him in Berkeley. At the apartment, Huck's1 roommate mentions Huck1 is at Greg's,12 his boyfriend, and a panicked Taylor2 tracks him to a graduation party, where he sees Greg12 kiss Huck1 and Huck1 smile.
Convinced he is the side piece, Taylor2 drinks an entire bottle of rum, shattering two years of sobriety, and passes out in his truck. Huck1 finds him, races him to the hospital, and the next morning explains: Greg12 was an ex getting closure, and he smiled because he was thinking of Taylor.2 To prove permanence, Huck1 introduces Taylor2 to his beloved grandparents.14
Taylor's solo journey, terrifying for someone who cannot bear being alone, is an act of vulnerable devotion that curdles into catastrophe through miscommunication. Wiley dramatizes how insecurity fills information gaps with worst-case narratives; Taylor, conditioned to believe he is unlovable, defaults to abandonment. The relapse is heartbreaking rather than shocking, a return to the coping mechanism of a boy who was never taught he mattered. Huck's response, rescue without judgment, then the deliberate offering of his grandparents, reverses the old pattern where love arrived as harm. Meeting the accepting elders models the chosen-family belonging Taylor has never known, planting the possibility that he could be someone worth bringing home.
Maisie's Verdict
Back in Utah, Huck1 brings Taylor2 to the Davis family barbecue, though only Huck1 was invited. Taylor,2 treated as an outsider by his own mother's7 family, overhears Maisie7 call him a compulsive liar and dismiss his abuse as fiction. Before Taylor2 hears it, Huck1 erupts in the kitchen, announcing to the entire house that he loves Taylor2 and will cut off anyone who cannot accept them.
But Taylor2 has already fled, wounded, roaring off on a motorcycle with Logan's5 bisexual uncle Devon.13 Huck1 and Logan5 chase him to a gay bar, where Huck1 reclaims him, and Logan5 begins thawing toward the relationship he had resented.
Maisie crystallizes the novel's portrait of parental failure, a mother who abandoned her son and now denies his suffering to protect her respectable second marriage. Her cruelty makes Huck's public declaration a genuine act of courage, choosing love over family approval, the exact choice Taylor once could not make with his father. The tragic timing, Taylor fleeing before hearing Huck defend him, extends the miscommunication motif while showing his ingrained reflex to remove himself before he can be rejected. Devon functions as a road-not-taken figure. Logan's softening signals that acceptance, once withheld, can be earned through witnessed love rather than argued into being.
Prom As It Should Have Been
Days before Huck1 leaves for Baltimore, Taylor2 stages an elaborate surprise. He first visits Aaron6 alone, confessing that he opened the curtain at prom and takes responsibility for his role in Huck's1 crisis, asking for the man's blessing and mending their fracture.
Then, with the whole friend group, both fathers, and a gym full of people, Taylor2 recreates prom in the same high school gym. He publicly comes out, declaring his love for Huck1 on the very stage where he once exposed him, replacing the worst night of Huck's1 life with the best. A fake-out proposal briefly terrifies everyone before dissolving into laughter and reconciliation.
This is the emotional climax, a deliberate ritual of repair that literalizes the novel's thesis: the past cannot be erased, only overwritten with new meaning. Taylor returns to the exact site and act of his greatest cruelty to invert it, transforming public exposure from violence into celebration, from shame into pride. His prior visit to Aaron demonstrates matured accountability, seeking forgiveness at its source rather than performing it for an audience. Wiley stages coming out as reparative theater, healing not just the couple but the community that once witnessed Huck's humiliation. The fake proposal keeps the tone buoyant, insisting that after so much darkness, these two have earned lightness and joy.
The Trailer Ghosts
Before Huck1 departs, Taylor2 takes him to his father's abandoned trailer, evicting a squatting raccoon in a burst of comic terror, then walking Huck1 through the rooms scarred by fist-shaped holes and the sink corner where his father cracked his skull. Sharing the physical evidence of his abuse, and admitting how deeply Maisie's7 lie hurt, Taylor2 finally lets Huck1 fully see him.
They make love there, deliberately overlaying the site of his worst memories with tenderness, the same alchemy Huck1 once performed for him. Taylor2 also tentatively asks to top for the first time, and Huck,1 who has never bottomed, agrees to consider it, both continuing to hand each other control they were once denied.
The trailer scene completes Taylor's arc of disclosure, moving from hiding bruises in a locker room years earlier to voluntarily narrating his abuse to the person he trusts. Wiley uses the raccoon's absurdity to release tension before descending into the genuinely painful, mimicking how survivors armor grief with humor. The act of replacing bad memories with good ones is the novel's healing method made explicit and reciprocal, each partner performing it for the other. The negotiation around topping and bottoming becomes a poignant metaphor: for both men, offering or receiving control is meaningful precisely because their childhoods stripped away choice. Intimacy here is the reclamation of agency.
Epilogue
A year of long distance later, the epilogues deliver payoff. Huck1 watches by video as Taylor2 competes at the national Nitro Fuel Games, surviving a terrifying fall to land his signature backflip and place second, a rookie thrilled simply to belong. Huck,1 now a Baltimore lineman, realizes their bond easily survives the miles.
In the final scene, Huck1 drives Taylor2 across the Maryland coast to a state welcome sign reading Delaware, proving their invented sanctuary is a real place after all. Taylor,2 who once tattooed the state's shape over his heart, and Huck,1 who inked Taylor's2 name inside his own matching Delaware, confirm the life they built: separated by seasons, permanently joined.
The epilogues resolve the ninety-day anxiety with quiet confidence rather than grand crisis, arguing that mature love endures precisely because it no longer requires proximity to feel secure. Taylor's competition fall, and his contentment at second place, measures his growth from the boy whose entire identity hinged on winning a single scholarship race. The literal Delaware sign is the novel's most satisfying symbol collapsing into reality: the imaginary safe country the boys once needed to survive has become a place they can simply drive to, a marriage of fantasy and fact. Their matching tattoos externalize what was always internal, love made permanent, chosen, and unashamed.
Analysis
Finding Delaware is a maximalist enemies-to-lovers romance that reframes teenage bullying as a tragedy of coerced concealment. Its governing insight is that cruelty and desire can spring from the same terrified root: Taylor2 torments Huck1 precisely because he wants him and has been taught that wanting him is lethal. Wiley refuses the easy redemption arc. Explanation is not absolution, and the novel insists both boys inflict real, sometimes horrifying harm, from broken bones to a public outing that nearly ends a life. What redeems them is not innocence but accountability, the slow, reciprocal labor of seeing damage as they cause it and choosing to repair rather than repeat. The book's healing method is stated and enacted: you cannot erase the past, so you overwrite it, returning to the trailer, the pool, the prom stage, the state of Delaware itself, and layering new meaning atop old wounds. This is trauma-informed romance, saturated with therapy language, sobriety, and the vocabulary of consent and self-worth, and it treats mental health with unusual centrality; Huck's1 perfectionism is revealed as a mask over suicidal despair, and the plot argues that being genuinely known, not admired, is what saves a person. Control is the deep structure beneath the erotics: two boys stripped of agency by abusive and expectant fathers find in each other the radical freedom of choosing to give or take control. The motocross and football careers that finally pull them apart reframe the conflict from interpersonal to structural, testing whether hard-won love can withstand ordinary distance. The answer, delivered in matching tattoos and a literal welcome sign, is that the imaginary safe country the boys once needed to survive can, with courage and time, become a real place they simply drive to together.
Review Summary
Finding Delaware is a polarizing debut novel featuring a toxic enemies-to-lovers romance between stepbrothers Huckslee and Taylor. Readers praise the intense emotional journey, character development, and steamy scenes, while others criticize the excessive length, time jumps, and Taylor's abusive behavior. The book explores themes of trauma, forgiveness, and self-discovery. Many reviewers found it compelling despite its flaws, while some couldn't overlook the characters' actions. Overall, it's a raw, angsty read that elicits strong reactions from its audience.
People Also Read
Characters
Huckslee (Huck) Davis
Closeted golden-boy athleteThe bishop's son who performs the perfect life: star football player, dutiful churchgoer, beloved by his small Utah town. Beneath the mask, Huck is a gay teenager suffocating under expectation and grief over his mother's death from cancer, secretly medicated for anxiety and drowning in the fear that being truly known would cost him everything. Artistic, sardonic, and quietly self-loathing, he processes pain by disappearing, physically and emotionally, rather than confronting it. His defining wound is the belief that love is conditional on performance. Across the novel he learns that being seen, rather than admired, is what actually saves him, and that offering forgiveness he never thought he could grant is its own form of freedom.
Taylor Tottman
Volatile motocross prodigyA shaggy-haired, tattooed adrenaline junkie whose swagger masks a childhood of abuse and abandonment. Raised by a violent, homophobic father after his mother left, Taylor learned to survive by hiding bruises, lashing out, and protecting his one escape route, motocross, at any cost. His cruelty toward Huck1 is displaced terror: he has wanted Huck1 since a stolen eighth-grade kiss and hates himself for it. Fiercely loyal to his chosen family, physically affectionate to the point of need, he craves touch because he was starved of it. Over years of therapy and hard-won sobriety, Taylor evolves from a self-destructive bully into someone capable of accountability, tenderness, and the terrifying act of loving out loud.
Christian
Taylor's ride-or-die best friendTaylor's2 inseparable best friend since kindergarten and stunt-riding partner in their Twins of Terror act. Warm, reckless, and endlessly loyal, Christian offers Taylor2 the safe home and family Taylor2 never had, and speaks blunt truths others avoid. His playful teasing masks a fierce protectiveness; he will happily threaten anyone who might break Taylor's2 heart, including Huck1.
Salem
Taylor's marketing-savvy confidanteTaylor's2 second-closest friend and on-again casual partner turned platonic soulmate, the only person who knew about his father's abuse. Sharp, unapologetic, and fiercely devoted, she manages the boys' motocross brand and functions as the group's blunt conscience. Her own commitment-shy relationship with Logan5 forms a running subplot about fear of permanence.
Logan
Huck's lifelong best friendHuck's1 best friend of over a decade, a quiet, religiously raised business student who processes hurt through withdrawal. Loyal but conflict-averse, he hides his own secrets, including a two-year relationship, revealing that Huck1 is not the only one who conceals. His strained journey toward accepting Huck's1 relationship mirrors the novel's theme of earned acceptance.
Aaron Davis
Huck's bishop fatherHuck's1 widowed father, a well-loved local bishop and realtor who marries Taylor's2 mother7. Genuinely kind yet burdened by the expectations his faith and community place on his son, he harbors his own hidden habits. His fraught, ultimately tender relationship with both boys drives much of the novel's exploration of parental love and failure.
Maisie
Taylor's estranged motherTaylor's2 mother, who abandoned him with his abusive father as a child and reappeared only after marrying Aaron6. Cold, image-conscious, and dismissive of her son's pain, she embodies the parental neglect that shaped Taylor's2 wounds. Her denial of his abuse marks one of the novel's cruelest betrayals.
Xed
Green-haired loyal friendA pierced, leather-clad member of the friend group who has spent years secretly in love with Matty9 and helping raise Matty's9 daughter. Struggling silently with heartbreak and self-medication, he mirrors Taylor's2 old habit of hiding pain, and represents the ache of unspoken love threatened by distance.
Matty
Gentle giant footballerA hulking, clumsy, good-natured football player and single father to young Hannah11. His draft to another team and complicated co-parenting with his ex form a poignant parallel to the main couple's separation.
Royce
Huck's kind first flingA sweet, openly gay boy from a rival school and Huck's1 early secret partner. Perceptive and generous, he is the first to name the truth of Huck's1 feelings for Taylor2, later becoming a supportive friend.
Hannah
Matty's adored daughterMatty's9 spirited young daughter, doted on by the whole friend group, especially Xed8. Her presence grounds the found-family theme and raises the emotional cost of the group's coming separations.
Greg
Huck's California exHuck's1 too-nice ex-boyfriend in Berkeley, whose closure-seeking kiss triggers a devastating misunderstanding. He ultimately proves gracious, helping rescue Taylor2 and confirming Huck's1 changed heart.
Devon
Logan's bisexual uncleLogan's5 estranged, motorcycle-riding bisexual uncle, ostracized by his family for his sexuality. A momentary temptation and mirror for Taylor2, he offers a glimpse of an outsider's freedom.
Huck's Grandparents
California safe harborHuck's1 maternal grandparents, a warm interracial couple who took him in after his crisis and put him through college. Their unconditional acceptance models the chosen belonging both boys crave.
Plot Devices
Delaware
Invented sanctuary spaceA fictional neutral country Huck1 names for the backyard dirt bike track, a place where the boys' feud is suspended and they can simply exist without fear. It begins as a joke rooted in Huck's1 geographic ignorance and grows into the novel's central symbol of queer safe space, later extended to their private text thread and eventually their whole relationship. The running gag that Delaware might not be real pays off when it becomes a literal destination. Both characters tattoo the state's shape over their hearts, transforming an imaginary refuge into a permanent, physical claim on each other. Delaware embodies the book's argument that love must first build the safety the world denies.
Water Encounters
Recurring intimacy motifAcross the novel, the couple's most pivotal sexual and emotional moments happen in or near water: the near-drowning breath play in the high school pool, a steamy shower reconciliation, and their gentle first time behind a waterfall. Water becomes the element where masks dissolve and control is surrendered, sometimes dangerously, sometimes tenderly. Wiley uses the motif to track the relationship's evolution: early water scenes fuse pleasure with the risk of death and dissociation, while later ones transmute the same element into consecration and healing. The characters themselves note that water has become their thing, making the pattern a self-aware emblem of how their intimacy keeps returning to the threshold between drowning and being saved.
The Transferred Scholarship
Hidden act of loveAfter winning the climactic motocross race in high school, Huck1 secretly gives the scholarship prize to Taylor2 rather than keeping it, since he already has a football ride. Taylor2 never learns this at the time and later loses the scholarship to jail. The truth surfaces years later through a phone call, retroactively reframing Huck's1 teenage generosity as a love letter Taylor2 could not read. The device functions as delayed dramatic payoff, deepening the tragedy of their lost years and dismantling Taylor's2 belief that Huck1 always got everything easily. It is proof that beneath the mutual cruelty, care existed long before either could admit it.
The Prom Curtain
Trauma site and reversalAt senior prom, a jealous Taylor2 yanks open a stage curtain, publicly exposing Huck1 kissing another boy before the whole class and Huck's1 father6, an outing that precipitates Huck's1 suicide attempt. The gym stage becomes the geographic anchor of their deepest wound. Years later, Taylor2 deliberately returns to the same stage to stage a redo prom where he publicly comes out and declares his love, converting the site of exposure into one of celebration. The curtain thus operates as both the novel's darkest act and the vehicle of its climactic healing, dramatizing the book's thesis that the past cannot be erased, only rewritten with new meaning.
Dual POV Text Threads
Intimacy and irony engineThe novel alternates first-person narration between Huck1 and Taylor2 and heavily features their text message exchanges, complete with evolving contact names and inside jokes. This structure lets the reader inhabit both boys' fears and misreadings simultaneously, generating dramatic irony when each assumes the worst about the other. The texts chart the relationship's thaw from hostility to flirtation to devotion, and the Delaware group chat becomes a portable version of their safe space. The device also externalizes the theme of concealment versus communication: their recurring failures to simply talk, versus their growing willingness to, become the measure of their growth toward a love that can survive distance.
FAQ
Synopsis & Basic Details
What is Finding Delaware about?
- A tumultuous reunion story: The novel centers on Huckslee Davis's return to Utah after four years away, prompted by his father's illness. He unexpectedly reconnects with Taylor Tottman, his former bully and soon-to-be stepbrother, reigniting a complex history of conflict and unspoken feelings.
- Navigating past trauma and secrets: As Huck grapples with family secrets and his own mental health struggles, Taylor confronts the lasting impact of his abusive past. Their forced proximity under one roof brings their unresolved tension to a head, forcing them to confront the painful history that shaped their relationship.
- Finding identity and connection: Against a backdrop of motocross, family drama, and personal demons, Huckslee and Taylor embark on a journey of self-discovery and tentative connection. The story explores whether they can move past years of animosity and trauma to build a genuine relationship, ultimately finding a sense of belonging and acceptance in each other.
Why should I read Finding Delaware?
- Deep dive into complex characters: The book offers a raw and unflinching look at two young men grappling with significant trauma, mental health issues, and societal pressures, providing a psychologically rich reading experience.
- Exploration of heavy, relevant themes: It tackles difficult subjects like child abuse, internalized homophobia, the impact of secrets, and the messy path to forgiveness and self-acceptance, resonating with contemporary struggles.
- Unique blend of genres: Combining elements of contemporary romance, sports fiction (motocross, football, swimming), and psychological drama, the narrative offers a fresh perspective on finding love and healing in unexpected places.
What is the background of Finding Delaware?
- Small-town Utah setting: The story is deeply rooted in a small, religious Utah town, where community reputation and traditional values create a backdrop of pressure and secrecy, particularly regarding sexuality and mental health.
- Motocross and sports culture: The world of amateur motocross racing, high school football, and swimming provides a competitive environment that fuels rivalry and offers both escape and pressure for the characters. Taylor's pursuit of a scholarship through racing is a central plot driver.
- Themes of hidden identity: The narrative explores the tension between public perception (Huckslee as the golden boy, Taylor as the delinquent) and private struggles, highlighting the toll of hiding one's true self in a judgmental environment.
What are the most memorable quotes in Finding Delaware?
- "Out here, nothing has to exist. No fights. Just us. Just Taylor and Huckslee.": This quote, spoken by Huckslee when showing Taylor the backyard track, defines the symbolic "Delaware" space—a place of temporary peace and authenticity away from their real-world conflict and expectations.
- "You're already in my soul. Now the outside just matches.": Huckslee's declaration upon revealing his Delaware tattoo with Taylor's name inside encapsulates the depth of his commitment and the idea that their connection transcends physical distance and past pain.
- "I'm going to love you loud, Taylor.": This powerful statement from Huckslee signifies his decision to stop hiding his feelings and identity, promising Taylor a love that is open and unafraid, directly contrasting the secrecy that defined their past.
What writing style, narrative choices, and literary techniques does Bree Wiley use?
- Dual POV narrative: The story alternates between Huckslee and Taylor's first-person perspectives, offering intimate access to their internal thoughts, emotional turmoil, and differing interpretations of shared events, highlighting their individual struggles and growth.
- Raw and visceral language: Wiley employs a direct, often blunt, and emotionally charged style, particularly in depicting internal monologues, moments of conflict, and physical sensations (like pain, anxiety, or sexual encounters), immersing the reader in the characters' raw experiences.
- Symbolism and motif: Recurring elements like the dirt track ("Delaware"), water (pool, ocean, waterfall), physical scars/bruises, and specific music tracks function as significant symbols and motifs, adding layers of meaning to the characters' emotional states and relationship dynamics.
Hidden Details & Subtle Connections
What are some minor details that add significant meaning?
- The specific music choices: The detailed soundtrack list and mentions of particular songs (e.g., Silversun Pickups, Post Malone, Alesana) aren't just background noise; they often reflect the characters' internal states or the mood of a scene, like Taylor's angry music or Huckslee's comfort songs.
- The recurring mention of eyes: The narrative frequently focuses on the characters' eyes—Taylor's shifting blue-green, Huckslee's dark brown, Logan's honey-brown—using them to convey unspoken emotions, intentions, and moments of vulnerability or connection that words fail to capture.
- The significance of physical touch: Beyond sexual intimacy, the subtle ways characters touch (a hand on a shoulder, fingers brushing, a gentle grip) often signal shifts in their emotional dynamic, revealing care, fear, or tentative trust in moments of high tension.
What are some subtle foreshadowing and callbacks?
- Early mentions of Taylor's father's shop: The initial description of Taylor's helmet plastered with his father's shop name subtly foreshadows the deep financial and emotional control his father holds over his racing career and life choices.
- Huckslee's fear of drowning: Huckslee's description of feeling "drowning" from anxiety or grief early on foreshadows the literal near-drowning incident in the pool with Taylor, linking his psychological state to a physical manifestation of his fears.
- The recurring "compulsive liar" accusation: Maisie's later accusation that Taylor is a "compulsive liar" echoes his earlier high school antics (like the swim team rumor), but the context shifts dramatically after the revelation of his father's abuse, re-framing his past behavior as a coping mechanism rather than inherent dishonesty.
What are some unexpected character connections?
- Taylor's deep bond with Christian's family: Beyond just Christian, Taylor's close relationship with Christian's mom (Juanita) and siblings, who provide him sanctuary and care, highlights the found family he relies on outside of his tumultuous home life.
- Logan's uncle Devon's role: Devon's brief appearance and offer of a motorcycle ride to Taylor, coupled with the later revelation of his own bisexuality and strained family relations, creates an unexpected parallel and moment of understanding between him and Taylor.
- The interconnectedness of the friend group's struggles: The revelation of Xed and Matt's hidden relationship and their struggles with Matty's move, mirroring Logan and Salem's relationship secrecy and Taylor and Huck's own hidden dynamic, shows how their individual issues are subtly interconnected within the friend group.
Who are the most significant supporting characters?
- Christian Totillo: As Taylor's unwavering best friend and confidante, Christian provides essential emotional support, a sense of belonging, and a shared dream (motocross career), acting as Taylor's anchor and moral compass, even when he disagrees with his actions.
- Salem Vaughn: Salem serves as Taylor's closest female friend, marketing manager, and a key figure in the friend group's dynamics. Her understanding of Taylor's trauma and her own relationship struggles with Logan create a parallel narrative and highlight themes of honesty and acceptance within relationships.
- Logan Davis: Huckslee's best friend, Logan, represents the challenge of maintaining long-term friendships through significant personal change and hidden identities. His initial struggle to accept Huck's relationship with Taylor and his own secret relationship with Salem mirror the main couple's journey with honesty and vulnerability.
Psychological, Emotional, & Relational Analysis
What are some unspoken motivations of the characters?
- Taylor's need for control: Taylor's aggressive behavior, need to dominate interactions, and later, his enjoyment of being controlled during sex, stem from a deep-seated need for control or relinquishing it, likely a coping mechanism developed in response to the unpredictable violence of his father.
- Huckslee's pursuit of external validation: Huckslee's focus on football, academic achievement, and maintaining a "golden boy" image is driven by an unspoken need for external validation, particularly from his father and community, to compensate for the internal turmoil and self-doubt caused by hiding his identity and trauma.
- Maisie's desire for a perfect family image: Maisie's coldness towards Taylor and her focus on appearances (like the wedding photos, the painting) suggest an unspoken motivation to create a seemingly perfect family unit with Aaron, potentially distancing herself from the messy reality of her past with Taylor's father and Taylor himself.
What psychological complexities do the characters exhibit?
- Trauma bonding and cyclical behavior: Taylor and Huckslee exhibit patterns of trauma bonding, where their intense conflict and moments of vulnerability are intertwined. Their repeated cycle of pushing each other away followed by intense connection reflects the complex psychological impact of their shared and individual traumas.
- Anxiety and dissociation: Huckslee's diagnosed anxiety disorder manifests in panic attacks, insomnia, and feelings of drowning or detachment. His tendency to "check out" or become numb is a psychological defense mechanism against overwhelming emotional pain and stress.
- Complex relationship with pain: Both characters have a complicated relationship with physical and emotional pain. Taylor uses physical conflict to mask deeper hurt and later finds pleasure in controlled pain during sex, while Huckslee's physical injuries (broken arm, scar) become intertwined with his emotional wounds and path to healing.
What are the major emotional turning points?
- The first kiss under the bleachers: This seemingly minor event in eighth grade is a pivotal emotional turning point, marking the moment mutual attraction is acknowledged and setting the stage for years of conflict driven by fear and denial.
- Taylor's confession at the cabin: Taylor's vulnerable admission about his father's abuse and the real reason behind his bullying marks a significant emotional shift, breaking down Huckslee's long-held perception of him as simply a cruel bully and opening the door for empathy and understanding.
- Huckslee's decision to come out publicly: Huckslee's declaration of his love for Taylor at the family barbecue, despite the potential backlash, is a major emotional turning point where he chooses authenticity and his relationship over fear and family expectations, signifying a profound act of self-acceptance.
How do relationship dynamics evolve?
- From enemies to lovers: The central dynamic evolves from intense animosity and bullying, fueled by hidden feelings and fear, to a tentative friendship, then a complex, on-again-off-again sexual and emotional connection, and finally, a committed romantic relationship.
- Shifting power dynamics: The power dynamic shifts throughout the story, initially with Taylor holding power through bullying, then moments of vulnerability where power is shared (cabin confession, pool scene), and later, Huckslee asserting control in sexual encounters, reflecting their individual journeys with control and submission.
- Friendships tested and redefined: The friendships within the group (Huck and Logan, Taylor and Christian, Logan and Salem, Matt and Xed) are tested by secrets, misunderstandings, and changing relationships, forcing characters to redefine loyalty, honesty, and support within their bonds.
Interpretation & Debate
Which parts of the story remain ambiguous or open-ended?
- The long-term impact of family relationships: While Huck and Aaron begin to reconcile, and Taylor confronts Maisie, the future of their relationships with their parents remains somewhat open-ended, particularly Maisie's acceptance of Taylor and their relationship.
- The full extent of Taylor's father's abuse: While Taylor reveals his father was violent and abusive, the narrative doesn't detail every instance, leaving some ambiguity about the full psychological toll and specific traumas Taylor endured.
- The future of the friend group dynamics: While the core friendships seem strong by the end, the impact of distance (Huck in Baltimore, Matt in Arizona) and the resolution of specific conflicts (Logan/Salem, Xed/Matt) are left to unfold beyond the final pages.
What are some debatable, controversial scenes or moments in Finding Delaware?
- The pool scene and dubious consent: The scene where Taylor holds Huckslee underwater before kissing him and initiating sexual contact is highly debatable regarding consent, particularly given Huckslee's state of anxiety and disorientation, raising questions about power dynamics and trauma responses.
- Huckslee's actions in the cabin bathroom: Huckslee's decision to force Taylor onto his knees and engage in sexual acts after Taylor's vulnerable confession is controversial, mirroring some of Taylor's past controlling behavior and raising questions about revenge, power, and consent within their complex dynamic.
- Maisie's portrayal and lack of redemption: Maisie's consistently cold and dismissive attitude towards Taylor, even after revelations about his past and his father's death, can be seen as controversial, as she is not given a clear arc of understanding or reconciliation, leaving her character largely unsympathetic.
Finding Delaware Ending Explained: How It Ends & What It Means
- The trip to Delaware: The final scene sees Huckslee surprising Taylor by driving him to the state of Delaware. This literal journey to the symbolic "neutral ground" they created in high school signifies that their relationship is no longer confined to a hidden space but is real and tangible in the world.
- Embracing the present and future: The ending emphasizes that their love is strong enough to overcome past trauma and the impending challenge of a long-distance relationship. By physically going to Delaware, they acknowledge their history but choose to build a future together, grounded in honesty and mutual love.
- Love as a destination: The final lines, where Taylor realizes Delaware is "so much more" than he hoped, and Huckslee states their love is real, suggest that "Finding Delaware" wasn't just about finding a place of peace, but about finding that peace and belonging in each other, making their love the ultimate destination.
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