Cover by the amazing @LNRoberts1 It's 1983 and high school sophomore, Anne Kelly's home life is coming apart at the seams. What's more, her friends are hanging with the popular crowd, and Anne doesn't feel she fits in. She gradually becomes fixated with a shy junior on the swim team named Gavin Maloney, but her friends think he's a total loser. However, Anne only becomes more interested in Gavin, and she decides to take a prank her friends played on him a step further. She begins writing him letters, not the stupid anonymous notes her friends put in his locker to taunt him, but real letters. Gavin has lost his mom to cancer and his father has gone missing. He now lives with his grandfather who is in a deteriorating state of Alzheimer's disease. It's a secret that Gavin must keep. Nobody can know or they will separate Gavin from his grandfather and put them both in state run homes. Gavin's plan is to stay invisible. Once he turns 18, he'll be a legal adult and nobody will be able to separate him from his grandfather. He just has to hold out one more year. But it isn't easy. Everyone needs friends, and now this Anne girl has singled him out. Part of him aches for human contact, and he's not immune to her quirky sense of humor, but she might be totally insane. She's practically stalking him, and if he befriends her, she might find out about his grandfather and ruin his plan. But what if he just wrote her back?

♡I was shocked to see whose still bewitching eyes had just accidentally met with mine. Giovanni! A boy, a crush, and one fantastic kiss. I thought I'd never see him again. ♡Dual POV ♡ It's the mid-90s on the West Coast: grunge music, mix tapes, pagers, skateboarding and baggy clothes. Lauren, an ordinarily shy 8th-grade girl, risks the first move to approach her long-time elusive crush, Gio, a gorgeous and mysterious outsider who has a secret crush of his own. The night of the school dance, they get exactly what they dreamed of: a first dance, a first kiss...but the timing isn't on their side, and the budding relationship slips through their fingers. Fast-forward to her junior year-the worst year of her life so far-and Lauren feels anything but confident. Gio reemerges at school after a three-year absence, and the unexpected encounter sends tremors through both of their lives. But their attraction to each other is as intense as ever, and interactions between them heat up quickly. However, Gio's school life is a disaster, and he harbors a secret he won't share, but it's the truth that Lauren keeps from him that really threatens to tear their young romance apart. "This is a great teen romance with angst, humor, and two incredible main characters. Ren is the friend I would have loved to have growing up, and Gio . . . well, he is just teen crush perfection! Also, it's set in the late nineteen nineties, which was my own teenage era, so I love revisiting the nostalgia of that time! " -Polly Ford. "This is a heartwarming and nostalgic read that will take you back to the late nineties, where we follow Ren, who is so relatable, as she comes of age on her journey with the swoon-worthy Giovanni, who will make your heart melt several times! Their journey is emotional, passionate, and both heart-wrenching and heart-warming-such a beautiful book! " - Heidi Carroll.

[2025 Amby Awards Favorite, 2025 Triple Moon Awards Teen Fiction Winner] 🌻🎸Inspired by the Dolly Parton song 'Wildflowers', best friends Violet and Poppy embrace their wild sides to navigate a tumultuous year in 8th grade.🎸🌻 When 13-year-old good girl Violet Wilson moves to a new housing development and bumps into wild child Poppy Cooper, there's a clash of worlds that transforms them both. Their friendship blossoms like an unruly wildflower seed, despite Violet's mother's attempts to squash it. Mrs. Wilson objects to Poppy's troubled, low-income family and her risky behavior. After a string of misadventures lands the girls in big trouble, Violet's bond with her mother begins to unravel. Mrs. Wilson, who once tended to Violet's safe, predictable world, becomes the fence caging her in. Not only is Violet's rocky relationship with her mother sending quakes through her world, but her parents' marriage crumbles before her eyes, leaving an uncertain future for Violet and her older brother Teddy. When Violet's mom plans to move back to her hometown, a thousand miles away, the wildflower girls enlist Teddy's help. They vow to complete an epic bucket list of teenage "firsts" before they must say goodbye. It's all fun and games until Violet learns that Poppy is keeping a devastating secret. The truth threatens to rip their friendship apart. Can these wildflowers weather the storm? Or was Violet's mom right about Poppy all along? RATED PG-13: some foul language, teenage subject matter, kissing, underage drinking at a party TRIGGER WARNING: divorce, infidelity, incarcerated parent, alcohol dependence, car accident