In the Orbit of You
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3.0 • 1 Rating
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
In the Orbit of You is a YA story of enduring love from acclaimed author Ashley Schumacher, where a personality test reunites two friends and makes them second guess their careful plans.
It's been years since Nova Evans last saw Sam. She was too young then to understand why he had to move away—and what it had to do with the cuts and bruises he got from home and never wanted to talk about. All she knew is that they promised to find each other when they were older, something she thought was impossible thanks to her and her mom moving around constantly. Until she bumps into Sam in her new school, and realizes he has clearly forgotten their childhood promise.
Sam Jordan has a plan for his life: accept his college football scholarship, date his girlfriend Abigail, and—most importantly—hide how much he wants to do something, anything other than The Plan™ his parents and coaches have set before him. It doesn't matter if sometimes he finds himself thinking about the new girl he met in the cafeteria, a girl who reminds him of a past that hurts to remember.
When a school-wide personality test reveals Nova and Sam to be each others' top matches—not only that, but a match of 99%, the highest in the school—they begin to remember why they were such close friends, all those years ago. As well as the myriad of reasons this new-yet-familiar, magnetic, sparkling thing between them will never, ever work out.
In the Orbit of You is a story about the enduring and changing nature of friendship, of the strange struggle between who you are and who you want to be, and finding your voice after trauma.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
As children, neighbors Sam and Nova were best friends who engaged in imaginative play between their houses and kissed each other's physical hurts, of which Sam had many due to his abusive household. But Sam and Nova are abruptly separated when Sam's abuse is discovered by his aunt and uncle; the kids "promise, promise" to find each other again when they're older. Now 17, new student Nova and popular Sam attend the same Texas high school, where Sam has become an accomplished, if secretly reluctant, football star with a cheerleader girlfriend. After years of moving around with her nomadic mother, Nova is desperately trying to figure herself out. Sam and Nova's emotional chance reunion is further complicated by them scoring a 99% on a schoolwide personality matching test, calling into question all of their individual carefully laid plans for the future, and the promises they made as children. Nova and Sam's achingly earnest love story is depicted in alternating POVs that simmer with searing characterization and a sense of kismet. Schumacher (The Renaissance of Gwen Hathaway) expertly captures the acute experiences of childhood nostalgia, deep romantic longing, and the stressors of teetering on the precipice of adulthood. Sam and Nova read as white. Ages 13–up.
