Love, Cof­fee, and Rev­o­lu­tion, the debut nov­el of TV showrun­ner and writer Stephanie Led­er, is a won­der­ful blend of gen­res — part romance, part adven­ture, and part com­ing-of-age — that begins with an excit­ing premise: dis­il­lu­sioned with the activism she sees at Cal-Berke­ley, Dee Blum drops out of col­lege and takes a job in Cos­ta Rica putting togeth­er ​“Truth Trips” — vaca­tions for social­ly-con­scious tourists to vis­it coop­er­a­tive cof­fee farms with the pur­pose of ulti­mate­ly drum­ming up mon­ey for a renowned non-profit’s mis­sion — only to dis­cov­er that the coop­er­a­tives are not as eth­i­cal as they seem. This premise is made fuller and more con­se­quen­tial when she meets two men, one who is doubt­ful of Dee’s polit­i­cal val­ues and one who seems all-in, each vying for her heart as she pur­sues her own truth.

Led­er does a great job at set­ting up an emo­tion­al­ly chal­leng­ing love tri­an­gle. In our cur­rent polar­ized polit­i­cal envi­ron­ment, it’s rare to see char­ac­ters of dif­fer­ent polit­i­cal beliefs get close with each oth­er, with­out min­i­miz­ing the impor­tance of those beliefs. Yet, Led­er is able to draw up a dynam­ic with both a con­ser­v­a­tive man and a lib­er­al man in such a way that Dee’s affec­tion for each of them is equal­ly con­vinc­ing. This plot­ting puts impor­tance on Dee find­ing the right per­son, rather than just the per­son with the ​“right” polit­i­cal beliefs, which is encour­ag­ing to read. Like­wise, Dee’s Jew­ish­ness, which is often jux­ta­posed against the Chris­t­ian back­ground of the book’s oth­er char­ac­ters, doesn’t act as a bar­ri­er between them, but as some­thing to be inte­grat­ed into their rela­tion­ships. Dee’s Jew­ish­ness also serves as a fre­quent source of humor; her unfa­mil­iar­i­ty with Chris­tian­i­ty, par­tic­u­lar­ly when it comes to her inter­ac­tions with her devout Catholic hosts in Cos­ta Rica, cre­ates delight­ful moments of embar­rass­ment and miscommunication.

More than any­thing, though, Love, Cof­fee, and Rev­o­lu­tion best suc­ceeds in its propul­sive action. Events take place at break­neck speed, leav­ing the book heav­i­ly plot­ted and, although marked­ly dif­fer­ent in tone, read­ing almost like a thriller. With­in the first few dozen pages, Dee has already left Cal­i­for­nia, secured a job in Cos­ta Rica, and met a hand­some Cos­ta Rican man, Adrián, who will join her for the rest of the book.

The pace of the novel’s plot­ting, though, comes with a few dis­ad­van­tages. Because of how quick­ly Dee meets char­ac­ters, rela­tion­ships are formed unre­al­is­ti­cal­ly quick­ly. For exam­ple, at one point, Dee meets a woman work­ing in the field of a cor­rupt cof­fee farm, and the woman begins shar­ing her life sto­ry and her dis­sat­is­fac­tion with the work­ing con­di­tions with Dee almost imme­di­ate­ly. This is ben­e­fi­cial to the plot, but it reads as false.

Sim­i­lar­ly, eth­i­cal ques­tions about sus­tain­abil­i­ty prac­tices and exam­i­na­tions of Dee’s per­son­al growth are giv­en atten­tion, but in a mild­ly abbre­vi­at­ed way, so that these sub­jects don’t feel explored to their fullest. And, in this abbre­vi­at­ed man­ner, mul­ti­ple pas­sages end with moments of self-reflec­tion that can come off as flat:

I turned off my phone and smiled. I didn’t know why, but Matiás believed in me. Maybe one day I’d be able to believe in myself?

These moments, though, do serve to keep the story’s momen­tum mov­ing for­ward, and they keep the novel’s pri­ma­ry themes of find­ing integri­ty and con­fronting dis­il­lu­sion­ment front-and-cen­ter for the reader.

In Love, Cof­fee, and Rev­o­lu­tion, Led­er shows her­self to be a skilled sto­ry­teller, with the abil­i­ty to han­dle chal­leng­ing sub­jects with care and lev­i­ty; and Dee Blum her­self is a plea­sure to spend 300 pages with.