IF I COULD GO BACK

Aaliyah Campbell, a Black 18-year-old from Chicago, has lived with her grandfather ever since her mother left her with him when she was small.

With no memories of her parents and only pictures to go by, Aaliyah feels a void in her heart and desperately desires to meet them. But she faces opposition from Grandpa Joe, who “hates them for reasons” she doesn’t understand, and from Ivy, her cousin, who believes that the past should stay in the past. Despite this, she finds her mother on Facebook and sends her a message. This opens the door to revelations of family secrets and deception even as Aaliyah tries to make sense of what happened among her family members and to find a way to bring everyone together again. At the same time, she struggles with completing 12th grade (she’s dreaming of UCLA) and maintaining her status on the track team (last year she won the state championship). Debut author Johnson provides readers with an in-depth look into living with anxiety: Aaliyah experiences frequent panic attacks and uses various coping methods to deal with them. The book also explores feelings of insecurity and abandonment as Aaliyah faces her complicated emotions about her parents. The story, which unfolds over the second half of Aaliyah’s senior year, is very quickly paced, sustaining readers’ interest, while offering deep characterization.

A deeply emotional and complex novel that looks at how we define family.