Not All Bridges Burn

Wren Calloway and Dakota Ashby have grown up in each other's lives whether they liked it or not. Their parents have been best friends since college. Somewhere along the way, the friendship between Wren and Dakota splintered into something tense and unspoken, with sharp remarks and practiced indifference hiding whatever used to be there.

Wren isn't an outcast - she's smart, kind, a kind of lowkey student at Willowridge High - but she keeps most people at a distance. Her real world lives in her songwriting notebook and late-night piano sessions, where she can safely say all the things she won't out loud. She's good at hiding how out of control she sometimes feels.

Dakota is the school's golden boy - charismatic, athletic, always in control - or at least that's what everyone thinks. But behind the perfect image is a guy under pressure to live up to expectations he's not sure he wants. And the one person who never bought into his perfect act? Wren Taylor.

When a group project at school - followed by an unexpected family arrangement - forces Dakota and Wren to spend real time together again, the walls they've both carefully built start to crack. Through late-night conversations, old jokes that still land, and the quiet pull of two people who've known each other forever, something new begins to take shape. Something real.

But just as they start to unravel the truth of who they are - and who they might be to each other - the past resurfaces, and old wounds threaten to break them before they really begin.

Set against the backdrop of senior year, this is a story about letting your guard down, rewriting what you thought you knew, and falling in love with the person who saw through you all along.

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TW - This book contains depictions of eating disorder behaviours such as body dysmorphia and purging. Chapters referencing these behaviours will have their own trigger warning. Please take care whilst reading.