I Will Never Leave You

April 15, 2024
In Kennedy’s sun-drenched paranormal thriller debut, a toxic love story that extends beyond the grave plays out via morally gray characters. Seventeen-year-old, white-cued Maya Rosier is not looking forward to graduating from Coldwater Canyon School for Girls in Los Angeles; due to challenges surrounding her mental health that led to a hospital stay, her grades suffered, and she didn’t get accepted into any colleges. While hiking through Antelope Valley with her longtime girlfriend Alana Murray, also white, Maya breaks up with her, citing Alana’s impending move to Massachusetts for college. Yet Alana’s cruel and cutting reaction prompts Maya to leave her on the trail and head back home without her. When Alana never returns from the hike, Maya contends with conflicting feelings surrounding her emotionally abusive ex-girlfriend suddenly vanishing from her life. Then Alana reappears as a ghost with an ultimatum: either Maya helps her possess someone so she can renew her lease on life, or she will frame Maya for her disappearance. Urgent feeling first-person prose shifts between past and present, simultaneously depicting a serpentine ghost story alongside flashbacks to Alana and Maya’s relationship. Ages 12–up. Agent: Chloe Seager, Madeleine Milburn Literary.

May 1, 2024
Grades 9-12 Maya and Alana have been dating for four years, the entirety of their high-school careers. Their push-and-pull relationship has shoved everyone else out of Maya's life, including her former best friends and her beloved big sister. Battling depression and the increasing feeling that something isn't working between them, Maya breaks up with Alana while hiking together near their hometown of L.A. But when Alana disappears, everyone suspects Maya knows more than she's saying about the case. Overwhelmed and heartbroken, Maya flees to Lake Ember, the little town where she and Alana spent summers growing up . . . but someone follows her. Faced with Alana's ghost, who insists that Maya owes her, Maya will need all of her strength to learn how to banish the past and save her future. This gripping thriller debut, with its harrowing take on toxic queer love, struggles with some internal inconsistencies but nails its portrayal of emotional abuse, possessive relationships, and the pain of letting go.

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Starred review from May 15, 2024
Those who love you will always be with you; those who control you will never let you go. Los Angeles teenager Maya is about to graduate from high school. She and her longtime girlfriend, Alana, set out on a hike to see the superbloom of brilliant wildflowers in Antelope Valley, just like they do every year. Maya, who struggles with anxiety, loves Alana fervently, even though she can be mean and cutting, dismissing Maya's needs whenever she actually manages to voice them. Showing some real strength, Maya breaks up with Alana as they stand among the flowers--and then, after Alana mocks her, Maya leaves her there without a ride. But back at home, Maya's anxiety flares--Alana hasn't reached out to Maya or her own mom; what if something happened to her? Soon, Alana is declared missing, and Maya is anxious that she'll get blamed for ditching her. In a panic, Maya returns to the lake house where her family used to summer, and where ghosts, both literal and figurative, haunt her. This eerie and captivating debut manifests deep-seated internalized trauma as living paranormal metaphors. The narrative reads like a gothic romance that acknowledges the intense damage that unhealthy relationships can cause: Maya, who suffers from depression and panic attacks and experiences emotional abuse at Alana's hands, courageously struggles for the right to live for herself and pursue her own happiness. The teens are both white. A healing paranormal tale. (Supernatural. 13-18)

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