They say home is where the heart is, but I've never been in love.
- "So, what kind of lesbian are you?""The kind that...likes...girls?""Same."
Life is Strange: Steph's Story is the first prose novel set in the Life Is Strange series. Written by Rosiee Thor and released in March 2023, it follows Steph Gingrich between the events of Life Is Strange: Before the Storm and Life Is Strange: True Colors, and primarily acts as a prequel to the latter.
Several years after the events in Arcadia Bay, Steph has graduated from college and moved back in with her father in Seattle, Washington. While working at a local board game café, she meets and falls for Izzie, and the two start the band "Drugstore Makeup". The novel charts the highs and lows of their two-year relationship before Steph moved to Haven Springs, Colorado.
Katy Bentz, Steph's voice actress, voices the audiobook.
A second Life is Strange novel, subtitled Heatwaves and written by Brittany Morris, is expected to release in April 2024. It features Alex and Steph and takes place after one of the possible endings to True Colors.
This book provides examples of:
- Ascended Extra: Izzie get a total of two lines of flashback dialogue and appears in a single photograph in Life Is Strange: True Colors; here, she's the second main character.
- George Gingrich appears as a lore-only character in Before the Storm and the Wavelengths DLC, where he's given a bit of characterisation via his email chains with Steph. While he doesn't have much of an impact on the story of the novel, he's frequently present in the narrative as a supporting character.
- Broad Strokes: This book follows from the "Sacrifice Arcadia Bay" ending of Life Is Strange; however, it is not established as canon and an author's note states that the player's decisions remain canon for their playthroughs.
- Butch Lesbian: Steph lightly pokes fun at herself using butch stereotypes occasionally, such as in the novel's opening pages when her dad asks if she needs help assembling some furniture for her new bedroom and she asks if he's forgotten she's a lesbian. In truth, as in the games, Steph's more of a tomboy than outright butch.
- The Cameo: The High Seas — a four-piece band introduced as major supporting characters in the comics — play a similar role here. Pixie and Steph's established friendship is revealed to have begun when Pixie joined Steph's D&D group at the Save Point Café, and the whole band later participates in the Battle of the Bands contest at Seattle Pride in friendly competition with Drugstore Makeup.
- Several True Colors characters — including Gabe, Ryan, Jed, Charlotte, Riley, and Eleanor — turn up towards the end of the book for a few scenes. This was pretty much a given, seeing as how the novel is a prequel to the game and ends with Steph's decision to move there.
- Canon Foreigner: Everyone except for Steph, Izzie, George, and a handful of Haven Springs residents is an original character created for this novel (or, in the case of The High Seas, carried over from the comics). A few other characters from the games (notably Chloe, Max, Rachel, and Mikey) get the odd mention, but none make an appearance.
- Cast Full of Gay: Most characters in the book are LGBTQ, with returning protagonist Steph obviously being a lesbian, and her girlfriend Izzie being trans (as established by her flashback in Life Is Strange: True Colors) and a lesbian as well. Steph's former college roommate Ollie is a gay trans man interested in her co-worker Jordie, who is also a trans man as well as a homoromantic asexual. Minor characters include Steph's brief college fling and good friend Lia, a polyamorous bisexual woman often accompanied by her two non-binary partners (Wes and Rain).
- The novel also confirms comic character Dex as a trans man, something that was strongly hinted at but never outright stated in his original appearances. The High Seas take part in the Battle of the Bands contest at Pride, suggesting that most or all of them could be LGBTQ+ (the comics already hinted at Dex and Pixie being a trans man and sapphic woman, respectively, so that only leaves Dwight and Tammi as unconfirmed).
- Cool Old Lady: The novel adds a brand-new member of the Gingrich family in the form of Steph's paternal grandmother, whom she and Izzie stay with while touring in Sacramento. Grandma Gingrich lives in a townhouse full of eclectic collectables, regularly goes out dancing with the other widows in her friend group, and hangs a progress pride flag from the flagpole above her front door. She's also, naturally, 100% enthusiastically supportive of her gay granddaughter, said gay granddaughter's transgender girlfriend, and their DIY punk rock band.
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Exiled from Continuity: The novel continues to treat Life Is Strange 2 as a bit of a non-entity compared to the rest of the games in series. Notably, Steph is actually living in Seattle in October 2016, and you'd expect the deaths of Esteban Diaz and Officer Matthews, the ongoing manhunt for Sean and Daniel, and the subsequent protests across the city to be something her socially-aware cohort take notice of, at least in passing. However, there's no mention of any LIS2 characters in the book, even though every other previous piece of LIS media gets some kind of Shout-Out. - Foregone Conclusion: This is a prequel or interquel, depending on how you look at it, with Life Is Strange: True Colors still two or three years in Steph's future when the novel begins. That means that her leaving Seattle, breaking up with Izzie, and moving to Haven Springs are all bound to happen by the end of the story.
- Lighter and Softer: The significant reason why Izzie gets kicked out of Vinyl Resting Place. The rest of the band wants to move towards more positive-sounding music, which clashes with Izzie's dark, painful music and lyrics.
- This trope also applies to the novel itself in a meta sense, as it relates to the rest of the Life is Strange series. The novel retains the series' usual themes of relationship drama and real-world LGBTQ+ issues, but makes them the main focus rather than taking a backseat to superhero sci-fi and/or murder mystery plots. What little focus those plots get here is through the lens of Steph's lingering trauma as a largely uninvolved bystander in the events that went down in Arcadia Bay, and the story is more grounded in her ordinary experiences of grief and recovery after living through those outlandish incidents.
- Parents as People: Steph's father is a minor character in the novel, and it's clear that they have a good but somewhat distant relationship, with Steph being reluctant to move back home after college despite the fact that they get along well. Much of George's sub-plot revolves around him starting his first serious romantic relationship following the death of his ex-wife, something that Steph can't help but react poorly to even though she acknowledges that she's not being especially fair either on her dad or his new girlfriend.
- Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: Steph's tendency to either hold people at arms' length and resist serious commitment or impulsively over-invest in one person or idea to the exclusion of everything else is outright stated to be a result of her trauma over the destruction of Arcadia Bay, which resulted in the deaths of her mother and many of her friends. In short, Steph no longer feels that she can safely love someone unless she's able to be with them at all times to stop something bad from happening, which is understandable given her past.
- Third Wheel: Steph feels like this when accompanying Jordie and Ollie to the Vinyl Resting Place gig; the two mostly speak to each other and ignore her, and she has a sneaking suspicion that her drink-spilling incident was orchestrated by Ollie to keep her out of their way. It's Played for Laughs, though, with Steph finding their attempts to make excuses to be alone together despite being at a crowded music venue rather endearing.
- Trans Tribulations: Izzie's experiences show that even with supportive family and a strong network of like-minded friends, being trans in modern-day USA is fraught with casual bigotry. Her ex-bandmates' willingness to flirt with transphobia in order to get under her skin and her panic at encountering a former classmate who engaged in queerphobic bullying in their youth are two of the more prominent examples. The fact that neither encounter leads to any kind of serious confrontation does nothing to soften Izzie's constant worry that something worse might be about to happen.
