Forever for a Year

by B. T. Gottfred

Overview

When Carolina and Trevor meet on their first day of school, something draws them to each other. They gradually share first kisses, first touches, first everythings. When they're together, nothing else matters. But one of them will make a choice, and the other a mistake, that will break what they thought was unbreakable. Both will wish they could fall in love again for the first time-but first love, by definition, can't happen twice.

Told in Carolina's and Trevor's alternating voices, this is an up-close-and-personal story of two teenagers falling in love for the first time ... and discovering it might not last forever.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781982501389
Publisher:	Blackstone Publishing
Publication date:	03/05/2019
Edition description:	Unabridged
Product dimensions:	5.30(w) x 7.50(h) x (d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

B. T. Gottfred is an author, playwright, and-ooh, look there, behind you ... no, you're right, never mind-director. This is a first novel. Sort of.

Rene Ruiz studied music education at the University of Texas and has won acclaim in local productions and musical revues, including roles in West Side Story, A Chorus Line, and Forever Plaid. He also spent many years working for Walt Disney World as a featured actor, singer, and announcer.

Pamela Lorence is a seasoned professional in the audio production business and a classically trained singer and performer. Her voice has been featured in video games, museum audio guides, commercials, children's toys, and dozens of audiobooks. This year she combined her love of reading with her love of audio production and launched Forever Young Audiobooks, a boutique audiobook publishing company focused on producing quality young adult titles. In her free time she's a volunteer narrator at the Learning Ally, a national nonprofit with a defined approach to help support students with learning disabilities. She also volunteers at the Bridge School, an innovative organization educating children with severe speech and physical impairments.

Dylan Thomas was born in Swansea, Wales on 27 October 1914. In 1934 his first book of poetry, Eighteen Poems appeared, followed by Twenty-five Poems in 1936, Deaths and Entrances in 1946 and in 1952 his final volume, Collected Poems. He also published many short stories, wrote filmscripts, broadcast stories and talks, did a series of lecture tours in the United States and wrote Under Milkwood, the radio play.

During his fourth lecture tour of the United States in 1953, a few days after his 39th birthday, he collapsed in his New York hotel and died on November 9th at St. Vincent's Hospital. His body was sent back to Laugharne, Wales, where his grave is marked by a simple wooden cross.

In June 1994, his wife, Caitlin Thomas, died in Italy, where she had spent most of the years of her life after the death of Dylan Thomas. Her body is buried next to his.

Editorial Reviews

★ 05/04/2015
Carolina Fisher is a newly minted high-school freshman with big hopes for the year ahead. Trevor Santos is a jaded transfer student from California, who isn’t interested in anything his new Illinois school has to offer—until he meets Carolina. Writing in the teenagers’ alternating perspectives, debut author Gottfred captures the starry-eyed exhilaration of first love (and nervous first explorations of sex) with tenderness and humor. Wearing her heart and her insecurities on her sleeve, Carolina is exuberant in her joy about Trevor (“I said I liked a boy to his face. And he said he liked me. What did this mean? I must know what this means or I will die”), while Trevor’s self-delusion that he isn’t falling hard for Carolina and his reflections on the looming family problems they both face are just as honest and realistic. In short, Gottfred’s characters actually sound, think, and act like real people, not the polished, best versions of themselves. Readers will need hearts of steel not to fall for this love story and its two storytellers. Ages 14–up. Agent: Jill Grinberg, Jill Grinberg Literary Management. (July)

Publishers Weekly

Poignant, quirky, and achingly honest, Forever for a Year is a pitch-perfect debut about first loves, first heartbreaks, and first forevers. This is the reason we read YA.” —Jessica Brody, author of the Unremembered Trilogy

“Debut author Gottfred captures the starry-eyed exhilaration of first love (and nervous first explorations of sex) with tenderness and humor. . . . Readers will need hearts of steel not to fall for this love story and its two storytellers.” -Publishers Weekly, starred review

“Like Rainbow Rowell’s Eleanor and Park, this work is a tale of first love. . . . A swoon-inducing and heartbreaking novel.” -School Library Journal

“Gottfred is plainly a talent to watch. Both emotionally satisfying and sure to be much discussed.” -Kirkus Reviews

“A touching, relatable, and highly appealing coming-of-age romance.” -The Horn Book

“Finding one another sparks first love, tender and sweet, tentative and questioning.” -VOYA

“B. T. Gottfred has given us an at times painfully realistic portrait of young love, warts and all.” -TeenReads

From the Publisher

04/01/2015
Gr 9 Up—Carolina and Trevor meet on the first day of their freshman year when Carolina gives Trevor two sheets of paper and a pencil so he can take notes in class. For both, it is near love at first sight. For Carolina, her freshman year is a chance to start fresh and be one of the popular girls while getting over her dad's infidelity to her mom. For Trevor, it's his second time attempting a freshman year, but in a new city as his family tries to pick up the pieces of his mother's attempted suicide. The teens fall hard and fast, sharing just about every first love experience one could imagine. Like Rainbow Rowell's Eleanor and Park (St. Martin's, 2013), this work is a tale of first love from the protagonists' alternating points of view. Gottfried gives this concept a new spin by providing a detailed account of all aspects of this budding relationship, from every insecure thought to the last "I love you." The author captures the unhealthy codependency of crushes in a way that will be relatable to teens. Some graphic sex scenes makes this title appropriate for older readers. VERDICT A swoon-inducing and heartbreaking novel for most YA collections.—Adrienne L. Strock, Teen Library Manager, Nashville Public Library

School Library Journal

2015-04-15
Two teens experience an intense year of first love. Carolina and Trevor, a pair of emotionally intuitive, gifted athletes, are drawn to each other on the first day of high school and soon discover a heady physical chemistry. Debut novelist Gottfred alternates between Carolina's and Trevor's deeply earnest voices to tease out both the elation and the anguish of headlong first love. This technique is now almost clichéd, but it works here thanks to the psychological heft and frankness of the protagonists' narration. Each longs for a romance based on total honesty, but as both struggle with mistrust in their relationships with their parents, neither fully trusts the other to accept their flaws, setting up future conflicts almost immediately. It's refreshing to see both male and female characters striving to sort out the messy, complex feelings of all kinds that go along with an active but secret sex life and to see how those experiences help them mature substantively (and age appropriately) in their relationships with both their peers and their parents—who are much better at parenting than they are at marriage. The downside of using alternating perspectives is length—this novel would have benefited from tighter editing—but Gottfred is plainly a talent to watch. Both emotionally satisfying and sure to be much discussed. (Fiction. 14-16)

Kirkus Reviews