Dare to Fall

October 1, 2018
High school senior MacKenzie Rivers has been avoiding twins Jaden and Danielle Hunter ever since their parents died in a car crash the August before junior year. Four years ago, Kenzie and her parents lost her baby sister, Grace, and her parents were irrevocably changed by their grief. She could not imagine that Jaden and Danielle--her crush and former friend, respectively--would be the same after their loss and could not bear to see them broken. Unable to cope and unsure how to behave around them, she managed to avoid them for a year--but after Kenzie runs into Dani in a Dairy Queen, the three begin to hang out again. Kenzie and Jaden start dating, and Dani finally seems to be on the road to healing. But Kenzie learns a terrible secret about the night the Hunters died, and she has to decide what she's going to do next. Maskame (Did I Mention I Miss You?, 2016, etc.) creates well-rounded characters with believable flaws. Readers watch them struggle as they try to make the best decisions they can; character development is at the heart of the story. Refreshingly, the teenage romantic relationship portrayed here is actually a healthy one, avoiding many common tropes and showing that vulnerability and honesty are everything. All characters are presumed white, and one secondary character is gay.A beautiful romance for readers who appreciate a character-driven novel. (Romance. 14-18)

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February 1, 2019

Gr 8 Up-Mackensie lives in a small town in Colorado. She is having a lot of trouble adjusting to the loss of her little sister Grace four years earlier. It is difficult watching the toll that grief is taking on her parents. Her mother drinks and her father is withdrawn. Kensie is friends with twins Danielle and her brother Jaden. Kensie and Jaden have even begun dating. But Kensie abruptly ends the relationship with the twins when their parents are tragically killed in a car accident. She avoids them for a year because she is too wrapped up in her own grief to deal with the pain that she knows they are experiencing. The former couple slowly rekindles the romance. But there is a secret that could destroy everything Kensie and Jaden have begun to rebuild. This is a believable, sweet romance for fans of Emery Lord, Sarah Dessen, and Estelle Laure. VERDICT Purchase for collections where family drama and romance fly off the shelves.-Grace Bazile, College of New Rochelle, New York City

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