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"I will be thinking about this book for a long time." -Sally Hepworth, author of Darling GirlsThe shocking, unforgettable novel that Junot Díaz called "searingly brilliant," now with an exclusive bonus chapter, enhanced discussion guide, and a conversation with the author, Ava Dellaira.GRIEF IS LIKE THIS . . .Falling in love with your best friend, only to lose her to a mysterious death.Working for decades to achieve a dream, and just when it's within reach, watching it threaten to go up in flames.Rushing home to the city you fled years ago to witness your father's last breaths.Spending the first sleepless months in the throes of new motherhood alone, as your husband struggles to save his career.Befriending the woman who should be your enemy, because you are that lonely . . . Annie, Jesse, Noah, and Juliette are tied together by their experiences of grief; they are separated by their own versions of the truth of what happened on a single night twelve years ago, when Juliette, a college freshman grieving her mother, and Noah, a high school senior fighting for a place in a world that told him he didn't matter, found each other. Spanning decades, this complex, captivating story pulls back the curtains of cancel culture to explore ambition, empathy, art, desire, consent, motherhood, and what it really means to lose everything.
About the author
Ava Dellaira is the author of the young-adult novels
In Search of Us and
Love Letters to the Dead, which was named a Best Book of the Year by Apple, Google,
BuzzFeed, and the New York Public Library, and was also featured in
Vanity Fair,
Entertainment Weekly,
USA Today, and
The New York Times. Her fiction has been translated into twenty-four languages. She is a graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop, where she was a Truman Capote Fellow. She grew up in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and received her undergraduate degree from the University of Chicago. She lives in Altadena, California, with her husband and their two young children.
Summary
One night, two people, four sides of a story.
In 2004, Juliette Marker, a white college freshman, and Noah King, a Black high school senior, are two lonely souls who enter each other’s orbit, forge a connection, and, after a chance meeting, go home together.
Twelve years later, Noah has done the impossible and made it in Hollywood. His first film is about to be released, and he and his beloved wife Jesse, a successful writer herself, have just had a baby. Meanwhile, Juliette’s best friend Annie is back in LA for the first time in more than a decade. As teenagers, Juliette and Annie shared an enviable bond, memorialized by Juliette’s mother, Margot, a renowned photographer. As Annie returns to the Topanga Canyon home where they spent their idyllic adolescence, she makes a startling discovery about Juliette that will threaten to blow up the life Noah has struggled to build.
Spanning decades, from LA to Chicago, and told through Annie, Juliette, Noah, and Jesse’s perspectives, this powerful, provocative debut novel delves into one life-changing night and the complex lives and relationships of those affected by it, exploring how race, artistic ambition, and grief expose different versions of the same story.
