fractured stars

Zerina Layn is eighteen years old on April Fools' Day-a cosmic joke she's been living her entire life. She stands on the Brooklyn Bridge in purple lace tights and ballet flats, ready to finally stop pretending she's whole when she's only ever been a girl-shaped wound.
But Death has other plans.
Cass-short for Cessation, a reaper who collects souls at the threshold between breathing and not-pulls her back from the ledge. It's a mistake. His job is observation, not intervention. And thirty minutes later, that mistake costs a boy named Saturne his life on the same bridge, in the same dark water, making the same choice Zerina was denied.
Now the cosmic ledger doesn't balance.
To fix what he broke, Cass offers Zerina something impossible: a second chance at her eighteenth birthday. A do-over. Twenty-four hours rewound to the moment before either of them jumped. But there's a catch-only one of them gets to live.
Zerina can choose to die as she intended, giving Saturne the future she never wanted. Or she can walk away and let a boy who wanted to write poetry drown while she continues rotting in Queens Academy, performing excellence while decomposing from the inside out.
Because some people don't want to be saved. They want permission to stop.

A darkly poetic exploration of depression, cosmic intervention, and the weight of choosing-perfect for fans of The Bell Jar, All the bright places, The perks of being a wallflower, darling venom, and anyone who's ever felt like dying might be the most honest thing they could do.

When death becomes a choice, what do you owe the living?