• Age: 14 to 18
• Grade: 9 to 12
• Reading age: 14 to 18

A teen girl searches for closure after her brother dies by suicide in this breathtaking novel for “fans of Erika L. Sánchez’s I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter and Sarah Everett’s How to Live without You” (Booklist, starred review).

Karmen is about to start her last year of high school, but it’s only been six weeks since her brother, Julian, died by suicide. How is she supposed to focus on school when huge questions loom: Why is Julian gone? How could she have missed seeing his pain? Could she have helped him?

When a blowup at school gets Karmen sent home for a few weeks, life gets more complicated: things between her parents are tenser than ever, her best friend’s acting like a stranger, and her search to understand why Julian died keeps coming up empty.

New friend Pru both baffles and comforts Karmen, and there might finally be something happening with her crush, Isaiah, but does she have time for either, or are they just more distractions? Will she ever understand Julian’s struggle and tragedy? If not, can she love—and live—again?

Janice Lynn Mather is a Bahamian writer with an MFA from the University of British Columbia. Her first novel, Learning to Breathe, was a Governor General’s Literary Award finalist, a BC Book Prize finalist, shortlisted for the 2019 CCBC Amy Mathers Teen Book Award, a YALSA Best Fiction for Young Adults selection, an Amelia Bloomer’s Top Ten Recommended Feminist Books for Young Readers pick, and a Junior Library Guild selection. Facing the Sun is her second novel for young adults. Janice Lynn lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, with her family and a growing collection of dust bunnies.

Janice Lynn Mather's profile page

Karmen’s return to school less than two months after her brother Julian died by suicide goes poorly—she feels under a microscope, far too raw for the usual high school carelessness and taunts, and also pressured by her father who thinks behaving normally will restore normalcy. When she is suspended after a fight, the time off gives her breathing room to try to find people who knew her brother, certain that if she just finds the right person and asks the right questions, then she’ll finally get answers. She finds, however, nothing but unraveled threads, more questions, and the realization that she must learn to live without ever actually learning why her brother took his life. There is a world waiting for her—a new girl who could be a friend, a long-time crush who is interested back, parents who both want to help her and need her help, and plans for what to do after high school—Karmen can make peace with embracing life even though her brother could not. Set in the Bahamas, this wrenching novel is absolutely compelling, with a vulnerable, sympathetic narrator whose journey toward healing is tenderly conveyed. The reader’s helplessness of watching Karmen stumble toward danger mirrors her own powerlessness in realizing that her brother had been hurting for years, and she couldn’t have helped him. It is a significant relief that she is able to find her core again, and her slow, not always linear, steps through grief are both realistic and reassuring. AS

5/1/24

"This wrenching novel is absolutely compelling, with a vulnerable, sympathetic narrator whose journey toward healing is tenderly conveyed."

<i >The Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books</i>

* "Readers will enjoy the book’s satisfying plot and thematic endings. Hand to fans of Erika L. Sánchez’s I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter (2017) and Sarah Everett’s How to Live without You (2022), whether they enjoyed the mystery, the mental-health focus, or the true-to-life voices."

4/15/24

"A unique and necessary view of teenage mourning."

<I>School Library Journal</I>

"Mather writes about depression and anxiety without judgment, and her depiction of Karmen’s survivor’s guilt...is handled with considerable nuance and empathy. A moving look at a sister’s flawed, heartfelt attempts to heal in the wake of emotional devastation."

<i>Kirkus Reviews</i>