by Julie Murphy
First published 2018
Ramona is hard to miss: six feet tall, blue hair, living in a trailer in Eulogy, Mississippi. She works multiple jobs to compensate for parents who can't quite hold things together, and she has always been clear about who she is. She likes girls. She loves her family. She wants out of Eulogy someday. Then her sister Hattie turns up pregnant, and the weight of everyone else's lives presses down harder than ever. When her childhood friend Freddie comes back to town, Ramona lets herself breathe for a minute. He pulls her into the pool with him, and something clicks. She starts swimming seriously, finding in the water a version of herself she didn't know was there. But her feelings for Freddie start changing too, and that she did not expect. Ramona has always known what she wants. Now she isn't so sure. She has to figure out whether this new pull toward Freddie means something real about who she is, or whether it changes nothing at all. Either way, she has to keep showing up for her family while she works it out.
Genres: coming-of-age, contemporary, young-adult, realistic-fiction, family-drama
Vibes: emotional, grounded, hopeful, intimate, introspective, thought-provoking
Tropes: found-family, friends-to-lovers, identity-crisis, slow-burn
Setting: Eulogy, Mississippi
Period: contemporary
408 pages · Paperback · Storytide
Content warnings: mental-illness