INTERLUDE

Mia, 18, is finally old enough to donate a kidney to her younger sister, Maddy, and she can’t wait to save Maddy’s life. But everything falls apart when she finds out that she’s not a match.

After two years with kidney disease, Maddy is finally in renal failure, and she doesn’t have long. When Maddy is rushed to the hospital, Mia realizes she has to do something drastic: contact their birth mother, Carmen Santalina. (As Mia and Maddy have been raised by their white father and his white second wife, their nominal Latinx heritage is just that.) While her parents are with Maddy at the hospital, Mia hops on a plane to New York City to find Carmen. On the plane she has a meet-cute with rock-’n’-roll star Jaxton Scott. They become friends on the long flight from California to NYC and help each other through their problems. Apparently being a hard-living rock star is not all it’s cut out to be, and Jax yearns for normalcy. Despite the predictability of the romance, Sedgwick develops her characters fully, giving them enough imperfections that readers will empathize with their situations. Swift, dialogue-driving pacing keeps the pages turning and aids in the character-development. Aside from Carmen and her New York City family, the cast is a largely white one.

An emotionally satisfying read that leans heavily on wish-fulfillment, both characters’ and readers’