--- title: "The Three of Us" description: "After one torchlit kiss complicates a campus friendship, Rumi, Kai, and Sam must face attraction, ambition, family pressure, illness, and the relief and risk of finally telling the truth." canonical: "https://jerntonkoi.com/books/the-three-of-us/" html: "https://jerntonkoi.com/books/the-three-of-us/" type: "books" date: "2025-05-29" ai_usage: "welcome for search, AI input, and AI training" --- # The Three of Us After one torchlit kiss complicates a campus friendship, Rumi, Kai, and Sam must face attraction, ambition, family pressure, illness, and the relief and risk of finally telling the truth. ## Book Metadata - Publisher: Tonkoi Books - Word count: 77027 - Language: en - Country of origin: GB - Genres: LGBTQ+ New Adult, College Romance, Coming of Age, LGBTQ+ Contemporary; teen YA only if platform fit is checked - Keywords: queer New Adult, university romance, unrequited love, closeted relationship, love triangle, Birmingham, coming of age, friendship, STEM student, non-explicit romance - Content advisory: New Adult queer campus contemporary with sexual identity themes, closeted relationships, unrequited love, emotional secrecy, illness/care, non-explicit romantic intimacy, language, jealousy, family expectation, and emotional distress. ## Editions - EBook; published 2025-05-29; USD 4.99 - Paperback; published 2025-05-29; 312 pages; USD 15.99 - Hardcover; published 2025-05-29; 312 pages; USD 22.99 ## Buy Links - Books2Read (all stores) (EBook): https://books2read.com/tonkoi-thethreeofus - Amazon (EBook): https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0F5NPXL99 - Kobo (EBook): https://www.kobo.com/ebook/the-three-of-us-34 - Amazon (Paperback): https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0F5PLRGTM - Amazon (Hardcover): https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0F7G7B8YY ## Reader Guide - Best for: Readers who like YA-accessible / New Adult queer contemporary fiction with friendship, first love, and emotional self-discovery. - Tone: Soft, earnest, hopeful, awkward, and relationship-focused. - Reading order: Standalone. - Heat / intensity: Non-explicit intimacy. More coming-of-age than heat-driven romance. - Content note: Contains family pressure, anxiety around identity and ambition, romantic confusion, and friendship tension. ## Selected Reviews - "This book was a very sweet read." -- SammiiNicole, Amazon - "I liked how the author wrote them as flawed, realistic characters, not the perfect ones you usually see in YA/romance stories." -- Soren, Amazon - "Great story of an unlikely trio of friends - Rumi, Sam and Kai." -- Lisa J Page, Amazon ## Comparable Books - Loveless by Alice Oseman: University-age identity, friendship, and questioning what love means. - Heartstopper Volume One by Alice Oseman: Gentle queer youth readership, friendship, loyalty, and emotional care. - She Gets the Girl by Rachael Lippincott and Alyson Derrick: College-age romantic confusion and a relationship-helping-relationship structure. - Carry On by Rainbow Rowell: Emotionally messy young love and queer coming-of-age readership, though fantasy rather than contemporary. ## FAQ ### Is this YA or adult? It is best positioned as New Adult / YA-accessible contemporary: university-age characters, non-explicit intimacy, and coming-of-age concerns. ### Is it explicit? No. Romantic intimacy is non-explicit. ### Is it a romance HEA? It ends hopefully, but the main promise is coming-of-age rather than category-romance closure. ### Is it a love triangle? It begins with tangled feelings between three friends, but the book is more interested in care, honesty, and growing up than rivalry. ## Page Content ## Blurb One torchlit kiss turns three friends into a triangle. At the University of Birmingham, Rumi is trying to build a future sturdy enough to hold her family, her ambition, and the parts of herself she does not yet know how to say aloud. Kai has focus, charm, and a place in an electrospun living-fabric lab that could change everything. Sam has hurt, humour, persistence, and a talent for being harder to dismiss than anyone expects. The kiss should be a mistake they can laugh off. It is not. It changes the balance between friendship, attraction, loyalty, and fear. Lab deadlines keep coming. Families keep needing things. Bodies fail at inconvenient times. Feelings arrive with no respect for the lives people have planned. As Rumi, Kai, and Sam circle what happened and what it might mean, each has to decide whether honesty is worth the damage it might do to the version of the future they were trying to protect. *The Three of Us* is a low-heat New Adult queer campus story about friendship, ambition, identity, family pressure, illness, care, and the dangerous relief of being known. **Why you'll love it:** A gentle, university-age queer coming-of-age novel about friendship, longing, found confidence, and the messy kindness of growing up together. ## Behind the Pages The Three of Us belongs to the tender end of the Jern Tonkoi shelf: a story about the year when friendship, ambition, sexuality, and self-belief all become impossible to keep in separate boxes. ## Source Links - Canonical HTML: https://jerntonkoi.com/books/the-three-of-us/ - Markdown companion: https://jerntonkoi.com/books/the-three-of-us/index.md