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PW #307: Young Adult Contemporary (Jewish #ownvoices): TO BE MISREAD

Thursday, 2 November 2017  |  Posted by Brenda Drake

Manuscript Status: Finished

Mentor Name: Rachel Lynn Solomon

Mentee Name: Marisa Kanter

Title: TO BE MISREAD

Category: Young Adult

Genre: Contemporary (Jewish #ownvoices)

Word Count: 75,000 words

Pitch:

IRL, seventeen-year-old Halle is a bookworm with severe social anxiety. Online, she’s Kels, an anonymous book blogger with (almost) 10K followers. When a boy with a blog of his own shows up at her new school, she must reconcile her dual identities—because while she’s falling for him as Halle, he’s in love with Kels.

Excerpt:

I can’t believe I packed my car charger. In the big suitcase. In the trunk.

What was I thinking?

My phone blinks. The backlight dims and the battery symbol turns red. Warning, it says. Refresh your email. Hurry, Halle. I’m dyingggg

The screen cuts to black at three percent.

How dare it? How dare it die on the day I’m waiting for The Most Important Email of My Life, an email that can poof into my inbox at any moment between two p.m. and ten p.m. EDT?

It’s waiting for me now, for all I know.

Subject: You are NOT a BookCon panelist!

Subject: Why did you even apply?

Subject: If only you had more Twitter followers…

I drop my phone into the cup holder and look at my brother, Ollie. He’s out cold. I kick his foot so he’ll quit manspreading. Actually, manspreading might be giving Ollie too much credit. It’s more like pubescent-teenage-boy-spreading.

Regardless, it’s unnecessary.

I reach for the e-reader in my tote, loaded with dozens of YA novels on my TBR. According to Helene, our GPS, we’re two hours away from our destination: Middle of Nowhere, Connecticut.

“Stay. On. I-95. For the next. Fifty miles,” says Helene.

“Thanks, babe,” Mom says. For a second, I’m glad my parents are going to Africa, if only because it means I get a break from their perpetual weirdness.

Mostly, I want to burst into tears whenever I think about it too hard.

Filed: PW Entries

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