First published 2009
Amelia and Riley transfer to Ashbury High for their final year, and the school can't stop watching them. They move through the hallways together like they belong to a world slightly separate from everyone else, glamorous, fiercely talented, completely wrapped up in each other. The other students are fascinated. Teachers notice. Nobody can quite figure them out. But Ashbury has its own history, and Amelia and Riley carry theirs. Beneath the surface of their intense relationship, secrets are accumulating. Some of those secrets are the kind that feel safe as long as nobody asks the right question. Others are the kind that, once spoken, change everything. Jaclyn Moriarty builds this story through her signature mosaic of documents, assignments, letters, transcripts, and official school papers, so the truth about Amelia and Riley emerges in pieces, from multiple angles, through voices that don't always agree. The emotional core is a question about what two people owe each other when they've built a life around keeping the world out.
Genres: drama, literary-fiction, coming-of-age, mystery, contemporary, young-adult
Vibes: atmospheric, emotionally-complex, intimate, introspective, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: found-family, secrets-and-lies, slow-burn-romance, unreliable-narrator
Setting: Ashbury High
578 pages · Paperback · Macmillan Children's Books
Content warnings: emotional-abuse, mental-illness