10/24/2016
Seventeen-year-old Norah has incapacitating OCD and agoraphobia: she hasn’t been outside of her home, except to see her therapist, in nearly four years. After a cute boy named Luke moves in next door and takes an interest in her, Norah manages to fight her urges to hide away, slowly befriending him and showing him who she really is, phobias and all. Norah’s unease permeates the pages (“Musings, meanderings, conversations that haven’t even happened run in one continuous loop around my head”), leaving readers with a deep understanding of the limitations of her conditions. While Luke’s almost-too-good-to-be-true patience and persistence help spur Norah to push herself in new ways, Gornall doesn’t minimize the role of therapy in the progress she makes nor the difficult work that still lies ahead for the teenager. Through Norah’s poetic internal monologue, Gornall, whose own experience with mental illness helped inform Norah’s story, provides an intimate glimpse into the mind of a young woman battling some very real demons. Ages 12–up. Agent: Mandy Hubbard, Emerald City Literary. (Jan.)
Meet the Young Adults, the B&N Teen Blog’s swat team of awesome teenaged bloggers. YA literature is a strange and wonderful landscape of books that should be read by everybody, but each month we highlight the perspective of teens reading the best of the best books written for and about them. Check back monthly to see what they’re recommending […]
2017 is going to be a stellar year for YA books if Louise Gornall’s Under Rose-Tainted Skies, released yesterday, is any indication. This often heartrending contemporary novel introduces readers to Norah, a young woman who has agoraphobia and OCD. Norah meets her new neighbor, Luke, under less than ideal circumstance: while attempting to fish for groceries […]
Did you think you’d take a quick reading break after rushing to discover all the literary wonders you wanted to get to before the end of 2016? You thought wrong. January kicks off 2017 in style, with a pack of thrilling new releases that includes a hotly anticipated debut fantasy, a heartbreaking story of unwanted reality TV […]
YA Open Mic is a monthly series in which YA authors share personal stories on topics of their choice. The aim of the series is to peel away the formality of bios and offer authors a platform to talk about something readers won’t necessarily find on their websites. This month, 14 authors discuss everything from […]