Never Seen the Stars
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
The ethereal romance of Dustin Thao's You've Reached Sam meets the challenge of coming of age with a disability of The Fault in our Stars in a tragic yet uplifting story of love and grief.
Hattie Murphy thinks the universe hates her.
She has a secret: she has the same genetic eye disease as her father and is slowly going blind, just like he did. Nobody knows. Not her friends. Not her family. As if that weren't hard enough, Hattie's good friend Mason drowns unexpectedly, leaving their friend group shattered.
After Mason's death, Hattie isn't ready to let go. There are too many things left unsaid between them. But while it's hard for her to find her seat in the dim light of the church at Mason's funeral, Hattie finds that she can see something no one else can: Mason's ghost. And when he speaks, teasing her the way he always did, it's clear their chemistry hasn't changed. Sometimes, when Mason visits her, Hattie can pretend that everything is how it used to be.
But the longer Hattie keeps her secrets, the harder it is to deny the truth. Her eyesight is getting worse, and she's mourning not just Mason, but the life she thought she'd have. Hattie's sick of being told that the only way to heal is to move on . . . because how can she move on if it means losing Mason forever?
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Teenage Hattie is left reeling following her best friend Mason's sudden drowning in this aching speculative novel about losing touch with oneself and the healing power of connection. When she starts seeing visions of Mason after his funeral, Hattie is reluctant to tell their friends or her parents. She's even more hesitant to reveal that she's beginning to lose her eyesight due to retinitis pigmentosa, just like her father, who struggles to manage his own diagnosis, preferring self-isolation to learning skills and acquiring tools that could help him adjust how he navigates the world. Hattie also wrestles with grief over all the things between her and Mason that were left unsaid, and her own perceived loss of future autonomy; she pulls away from her friends and finds comfort in communicating with Mason's ghost. Hoping to regain a sense of control, Hattie throws herself into dating her costar in the school play and attempting increasingly reckless ventures, such as skiing and driving at night despite her worsening vision. Via empathetic prose and Hattie's acerbic narration, Korsh (When Fairies Go Too Far) ruminates on the impact and different manifestations of grief, resulting in a pensive romantic drama. Main characters cue as white. Ages 14–up.
