Overview

From beloved author and National Book Award finalist Deb Caletti comes a fresh and luminous novel about love and loss, mental illness, and taking charge of one's own fate ( Kirkus Reviews, starred review). There are many ways to be lost. Sometimes people want to be lost. Madison Mads to everyone who knows her is trying her best to escape herself during one last summer away from a mother who needs more from her than she can give, and from a future that has been decided by everyone but her. Sometimes the lost do the unimaginable, like the woman the body Mads collides with in the middle of the water on a traumatic morning that changes everything. And sometimes the lost are the ones left behind, like the son of the woman in the water, Billy Youngwolf Floyd. Billy is struggling to find his way through each day in the shadow of grief. His one comfort is the map he carries in his pocket, out of his favorite book The Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler. When three lives (and one special, shared book) collide, strange things happen. Things like questions and coincidences and secrets, lots of secrets. Things like falling in love. But can two lost people telling so many lies find their way through tragedy to each other and to solid ground?

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Gr 9 Up The relationship between Mads and Billy, two teenagers thrown together by grisly fate and bound together over the course of the novel by love, echoes with a motif a certain book beloved by them both: E. L. Konigsburg s From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler. Having read the story of these two siblings who decide to hide out in the Metropolitan Museum of Art after closing time is not essential, but it is helpful to understanding the book s significance in their lives. Mads is a big reader; Billy has really only read this one book, which was special to his depressed mother, who left Billy reeling and living with his Gran after she jumped off a Seattle bridge. Mads struggles with depression herself even while she is living with her aunt and uncle to take an accelerated course to get her realtor s license. She feels trapped and locked into the future her mother has dictated. The teen is swimming in a lake one spring morning when the corpse of a jumper bumps her. Mads tows Anna Youngwolf Floyd to shore and becomes obsessed with her and the son she left behind. As she and the dog-saving, rescue shelter working gamer Billy come to know each other, Mads can t tell him what brought her into his life. Caletti excels at focusing on the perspectives of both young people. Billy s overwhelming and moving love for Mads will pluck the heartstrings of many readers. VERDICT Recommend this tale of overcoming the ogres of depression and loss with the saving graces of sustaining relationships and self-discovery.--School Library Journal *STARRED REVIEW* February 2016

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