Averil Offline
My MG inspired by The Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler
Publication Date: February 13, 2024
Twelve-year-old coder Averil can’t do anything without her parents knowing. That’s because her mom uses the Ruby Slippers surveillance app to check where she is, who she texts, and even what she eats for lunch. Averil wonders how she’s ever going to grow up if she’s not allowed to learn from mistakes. When she learns that Ruby Slippers is about to become even more invasive, she teams up with Max, a new kid at school dealing with overbearing parents of his own. Together they figure out an almost foolproof way to ditch their parents and run away to the college campus that’s home to the quirky Ruby Slippers creator. It’s an extreme challenge just getting to meet with him—but the two kids cleverly figure out a series of puzzles and get their meeting. What they find gives them pause—and gets them thinking about the value of honesty in a new light. After all, isn’t trust at the heart of their parents’ need to know?
Lia and Beckett’s Abracadabra
A YA where rival stage magicians fall for each other while performing illusions and conning bad guys.
Publication Date: July 5, 2022
Seventeen-year-old Lia Sawyer is thrilled to get a mysterious invitation from her grandmother to compete in a stage magic contest––even though her parents object. But she’s going to be judged by a bunch of old-school magicians who think that because she’s a girl, her only magical talents lie in wearing sparkly dresses, providing distractions, and getting sawed, crushed, or stretched. And Lia can’t ask her grandmother for help because she’s disappeared, leaving behind only her best magic tricks, a few obscure clues, and an order to stay away from Blackwell boys, the latest generation of a rival magic family. Lia totally plans to follow her grandmother’s rule––until the cute boy she meets on the beach turns out to be Beckett Blackwell, son of the biggest old guard magical family there is. Witty and romantic, Lia and Beckett’s Abracadabra is a YA rom-com with a magical twist!
The Quantum Weirdness of the Almost-Kiss
My debut YA rom-com about smart girls, love-struck boys, and quantum theory
Publication Date: January 5, 2021
Seventeen-year-old Evie Beckham has always been too occupied with her love of math and frequent battles with anxiety to want to date. Besides, she’s always found the idea of kissing to be kind of weird. But by senior year, thanks to therapy and her friends, she’s feeling braver than before. Maybe even brave enough to enter a national math and physics competition or flirt back with the new boy. Meanwhile, Evie’s best friend, Caleb Covic, has always been a little in love with her. So he’s horrified when he is forced to witness Evie’s meet-cute with the new guy. Desperate, Caleb uses an online forum to capture Evie’s interest—and it goes a little too well. Now Evie wonders how she went from avoiding romance to having to choose between two—or is it three?—boys.
Summer of Brave
A middle grade novel that takes on academic pressure, first crushes and speaking up
Publication Date: March 1, 2021
Twelve-year-old Lilla Baxter-Willoughby doesn’t lie. She’s just a little…careful. To keep her parents happy, she hides how much she hates moving back and forth between their houses, and she ignores her doubts about the elite high school they’re pushing her toward. To keep peace with her best friend Vivi, Lilla doesn’t share that she got the junior camp counselor job Vivi wanted. And to avoid losing everything she’s worked so hard for, Lilla doesn’t argue when the camp coordinator dismisses an upsetting moment as “boys being boys.” After all, if Lilla starts saying what she feels out loud, everything in her life might come crashing down. And she doesn’t need that.
Except—maybe she does.
.
