For her senior capstone project, Pip researches the disappearance of former Fairview High student Andie, last seen on April 18, 2014, by her younger sister, Becca. Pip has known and liked Sal since childhood he’d supported her when she was being bullied in middle school. There’s not much plot here, but readers will relish the opportunity to climb inside Autumn’s head.Įveryone believes that Salil Singh killed his girlfriend, Andrea Bell, five years ago-except Pippa Fitz-Amobi. Even secondary characters are well-rounded, with their own histories and motivations. Autumn’s coming-of-age is sensitively chronicled, with a wide range of experiences and events shaping her character. But on August 8, everything changes, and Autumn has to rely on all her strength to move on.

In the summer after graduation, Autumn and Finny reconnect and are finally ready to be more than friends. Growing up, Autumn and Finny were like peas in a pod despite their differences: Autumn is “quirky and odd,” while Finny is “sweet and shy and everyone like him.” But in eighth grade, Autumn and Finny stop being friends due to an unexpected kiss. They drift apart and find new friends, but their friendship keeps asserting itself at parties, shared holiday gatherings and random encounters.

The finely drawn characters capture readers’ attention in this debut.Īutumn and Phineas, nicknamed Finny, were born a week apart their mothers are still best friends. Occasionally, her characters come across the page a tad too emotionally developed, but distinct prose-“Max was the first bite of grilled cheese on a snowy day, the easy fit of my favorite jeans”-keeps them easy to relate to.Ī sweet story about forging an identity beyond tragedy. She taps into a very specific human drive-the need to be recognized and appreciated for one's own talents-and provides an engaging backdrop of high school life. And when one of those new people seems like something more than a friend, great! Lord delivers teenage characters in full bloom who love hard, fall hard, cry hard and remain ferociously committed to one another. When she becomes close to a few new people, even better. But as long as Paige has her friends, things are OK. Her divorced parents make an uncomfortable situation even stranger by revealing a bizarre secret. Her grandmother, Paige's champion and confidante, has Alzheimer's disease. She needs to get over her boyfriend's death and move on, but that's not easy. After a while, that's not what she needs. In the year after Paige's boyfriend dies in a freak drowning accident, she gets a lot of kind looks from people who feel sorry for her. Life doesn't have to be defined by death, but try telling that to sympathetic strangers.

The start of me and you by emery lord