Leah Davison is the type of girl who shines in her own quiet way-smart, funny, and undeniably cute. She's a little goofy, a little shy, and loves the balance between her two worlds: cheerleading, where she lets her confidence show, and painting, where she can lose herself in the quiet solitude of her creativity. Leah's life is comfortable, and she's content with her friends and her hobbies. But when her teacher announces that she'll be paired with Mason Harris for a class project, her world is suddenly thrown into uncertainty.
Mason is known for his temper, his loner attitude, and his reputation as the school's biggest jerk. No one expects him to work well with anyone, least of all someone like Leah, who's always been the opposite of him-bright, open, and full of heart. Leah knows that this partnership is going to be a nightmare, but she has no choice. Backing out isn't an option.
Mason doesn't need anyone. But when Leah, with her shy smiles and warm spirit, unexpectedly enters his life, Mason's carefully built walls start to crack. He's about to find out that the girl he never saw coming might just be the one who changes everything and makes him feel alive again.
In the day-to-day trenches of high school, it is almost the default-setting to believe we are the main character of our own coming-of-age story.
This is not wrong. It's just ours isn't the only story there is.
The jocks, the nerds, the cheerleaders, the losers, the stoners, the fangirls, the skaters. Everyone's the realest most important person in existence, all of them, at the same time, first-person narrators to their own stories, stumbling into each other's plot lines, defying the status-quo, catalysts to ups and downs.
A deconstruction of all the high school tropes and cliches written over the years, a deep-dive into the psyche of students trying to finish high school while going through irrevocable self-discovery, the most improbable of connections, and the insufferable pains of growing up.