How to Love
Katie Cotugno
About this book
This is a love story. But it's not what you think. This is not a first kiss, or a first date. This is not love at first sight. This is a boy and a girl falling in messy, unpredictable, thrilling love. This is the complicated route to happiness that follows. This is real. This is life. This is how to love. Before: Reena has loved Sawyer LeGrande for as long as she can remember. But he's never noticed her, until one day... he does. They fall in messy, complicated love. But then Sawyer disappears from their humid Florida town, leaving a devastated - and pregnant - Reena behind. After: Three years later and there's a new love in Reena's life: her daughter Hannah. But just as swiftly and suddenly as he disappeared, Sawyer turns up again. After everything that's happened, can Reena really let herself love Sawyer again?
Why it was banned
Listed by PEN America as removed in Escambia County Public Schools, Florida, beginning August 2023, with the district status reported as removed pending review or investigation.
Censorship history
United States school ban context: How to Love appears in PEN America's documentation of the large Escambia County Public Schools removals, a wave of district-level restrictions that drew national attention and became part of wider litigation and debate over Florida school library policies. The book's removal fits a pattern in which young adult novels involving sexuality, pregnancy, and adolescent relationships were swept into broad administrative reviews rather than evaluated through narrow, book-specific educational criteria.
Bans
| Country | Year | Reasons |
|---|---|---|
| United States | 2025 | SexualMoral |
