THIS IS WHAT IT FEELS LIKE

Three indomitable young Californian women graduate high school while grappling with friendship, love, and living authentically.

They were best friends and they made music together, a “weird mix of punk and grunge and R&B”: Hanna, who is white; Juliana, a brown-skinned Bajan lesbian; and Dia, a copper-skinned girl with natural curly hair who has a baby. The prologue offers a taste of their former life, but by Chapter 1, the band is no longer, and Jules and Dia are estranged from Hanna, whose excessive drinking made her family and friends lose faith in her. Jules and Dia don’t know that Hanna went to rehab and has been sober for over a year. So when the Sun City talent search contest announces prizes that would mean the world to all three of them, Dia is reluctant to agree with Jules that they can only enter with Hanna. Will they be able to rebuild trust, put their resentment from past mistakes to rest, and make the music they know is in their hearts? While the action builds slowly at first, readers will root for all three characters, who are featured in alternating chapters, as they navigate complex relationships—Hanna’s guilt and anger at home, Jules’ budding romance, and Dia’s resistance to love because of past tragedy.

A realistic, impassioned portrait of young women coming into their own in all their messy glory.