The Secret to Belonging
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- Pedido anticipado
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- Se espera: 15 sept 2026
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- $229.00
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- Pedido anticipado
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- $229.00
Descripción editorial
Three starred reviews!
A neglected teen travels to Norway for a fresh start in this “lush…aching” (Publishers Weekly, starred review) coming-of-age novel in verse about longing, love, and the courage to create joy from the ashes of despair by award-winning and New York Times bestselling author Megan E. Freeman.
You are invisible in your own family. Your parents spend all their care and attention on your brother, who is addicted to drugs. Your dreams don’t matter to anyone but you.
Your only ticket out is a college fund left by your grandfather—until your parents use it to pay for your brother’s drug rehab.
Just when your future seems about to collapse, you are offered a lifeline: a scholarship to become an exchange student in a remote part of Norway. It’s an invitation to begin a new life in a new place with new people…a place where you might finally feel like you belong.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Studying abroad gives a lonely teen a path toward happiness in this lush verse novel from Freeman (Away). With her parents focused on her older brother and his drug dependency, the unnamed narrator, a high school junior in 1982 California, consistently feels invisible. Resigned and doubtful that her relationship with her family will improve, she counts down the days until she can leave for college, until her parents inform her that they've used her tuition fund to enroll her brother in another rehabilitation program. Hoping to lift the protagonist's spirits and provide a temporary escape, her friend encourages her to participate in a European exchange program for their senior year. Arriving in Northern Norway, she's skeptical that her host family is as happy as they seem; she soon clicks with them, though, and falls in love with the art school she attends. But the teen's tentative peace, including a budding romance, is haunted by thoughts of her impending return to the U.S., which happens sooner than she'd like when another family crisis kicks off back home. Spare yet powerful language relays sensate descriptions of the Norwegian backdrop and the cathartic, everyday pleasures the protagonist experiences during her retreat, which expertly juxtapose the profound isolation she feels at home. Restrained and condensed second-person narration cultivates a persuasive sense of immediacy throughout this aching exploration of heartbreak and hope. Ages 12–up.
