Light from Uncommon Stars by Ryka Aoki

 

This is a pretty good novel, though I kinda wish it had made up its mind to be either Fantasy or SF--as it is the SF in it feels more like a thin glaze on the donut of Fantasy, which means it doesn't really hold enough weight to be the deus ex machina at the end. But the novel's not really about the aliens running the donut shop or the violin teacher dealing with the fallout of her deal with Hell: The novel's about finding or making family, and about how trans people often need to do that because the family they're born into are assholes. Ms. Aoki writes that story, painfully well.