Infandous
"Once there was a mermaid who dared to love a wolf. Her love for him was so sudden and so fierce that it tore her tail into legs."
Sephora Golding lives in the shadow of her unbelievably beautiful mother. Even though they scrape by in the seedier part of Venice Beach, she's always felt lucky. As a child, she imagined she was a minor but beloved character in her mother's fairy tale. But now, at sixteen, the fairy tale is less Disney and more Grimm. And she wants the story to be her own.
Then she meets Felix, and the fairy tale takes a turn she never imagined.
"Things don't really turn out the way they do in fairy tales. I'm telling you that right up front, so you're not disappointed later."
Sometimes, a story is just a way to hide the unspeakable in plain sight.
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Become an affiliateElana K. Arnold is the award-winning author of many books for children and teens, including the Sydney Taylor and National Jewish Book Award winner The Blood Years, the Printz Honor winner Damsel, the National Book Award finalist What Girls Are Made Of, and the Global Read Aloud selection A Boy Called Bat. She is a member of the faculty at Hamline University's MFA in writing for children and young adults program and lives in Long Beach, California, with her husband, two children, and a menagerie of animals. You can find her online at elanakarnold.com.
"A coming-of-age story consciously reminiscent of Lolita, this multifaceted portrayal of family bonds surprises with its nuanced and sometimes-searing emotional gravity." --starred, Kirkus Reviews
-- (1/15/2015 12:00:00 AM)"Sephora herself is a narrator who defies convention, and her story, harsh and spare, is unforgettable." --starred, Booklist
-- (1/1/2015 12:00:00 AM)"A novel that is as artful as it is emotionally disconcerting."--The Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books
-- (5/1/2015 12:00:00 AM)"[T]his is a book so fantastically excellent that I fear it may reduce me to a gushing disaster, that I'll have to resort to just throwing copies at peoples' heads rather than using actual words to describe my love for it....absolutely stellar."―Kirkus Reviews Blog
-- (3/26/2015 12:00:00 AM)"...Sephora's painful journey and its lack of easy answers will stick with readers, as will its razor-sharp commentaries on sexual and societal double standards."--Publishers Weekly
-- (1/19/2015 12:00:00 AM)"Arnold's fresh and exciting plot twist is unexpected, elevated by the lyrical writing style.... A well-written and evenly paced dramatic tale about finding peace in ones own situation." --School Library Journal
-- (12/1/2014 12:00:00 AM)