• Age: 12 to 18
• Grade: 7 to 12

From acclaimed author Louisa Onomé comes the perfect embodiment of a Sad Girl Summer novel: a girl left on her own during a hot Toronto summer, grasping at sunshine, haunted by absence

Summer and her parents are on the run, each in their own way.

Under investigation for fraud, Summer’s mother and father have left town without a word, leaving a stunned seventeen-year-old Summer behind. When Summer is discovered to be living alone, without a guardian or a permanent residence, for a whole year, she is sent to live with a cousin who seems to have it all—wealth, talent, charm and the thing Summer craves most of all: freedom. Despite Oluchi’s eager offers of companionship, Summer continues to keep her guard up and her expectations of Olu low. It’s the only way she can make it to eighteen and true and legal freedom: by not trusting the adults in her life and by quashing her conflicted hopes of reuniting with her parents.

But the discovery of a mysterious letter from her parents to an estranged family friend throws a wrench in Summer’s plans. Drawn by her need to understand her parents’ betrayal, Summer finds her carefully curated calm giving way to a very necessary storm—one that brings Summer, her cousin and even her friends closer together. But as Summer feels increasingly haunted by the absence—and jarring presence—of her parents, she must learn how to offer more of herself to herself.

LOUISA ONOMÉ is the Nigerian Canadian author of the critically acclaimed young adult novels Like Home and Twice as Perfect. She holds a BA in professional writing from York University. When she is not writing, her hobbies include picking up languages she may never use, crying over her favourite video games and perfecting her skin-care routine. In her latest work for teens, The Melancholy of Summer, she explores identity, culture and the ever-shifting definitions of home and family. Louisa Onomé lives in the Toronto area.

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