DELICATE MONSTERS

Three troubled teenagers. One is as cruel as she pleases, another is riddled with guilt, and the third sees terrifying visions. Their lives intersect and explode in a California town where picturesque grapevines grow and ugly secrets are exposed.

Seventeen-year-old Sadie Su arrives at Sonoma High after being kicked out of boarding school—the third time in four years—for almost killing a classmate. Her childhood friend, 18-year-old Emerson Tate, is beginning to fall in love with classmate May and cringes when he realizes Sadie’s back in town. Emerson’s kid brother, Miles, is a sickly, nervous soul, in and out of hospitals, who fears his worst vision is coming true. During a party, Sadie catches Emerson in an act involving an unconscious May, which reignites a secret she’s dying to taunt him with. Grappling with his own demons, Emerson searches for the truth about his father’s death. When Miles goes missing, a weary Emerson can’t bring himself to care, while Sadie, the most heartless of all, finds herself wondering if there’s still hope. Kuehn’s prose intensifies in feeling with each page. Her characters’ mental anguish and vulnerability take center stage, no excuses allowed, pain and rawness totally exposed. Sexual language and activity reveal the highs and lows of these teens on the edge of despair.

A chilling look into heartache and reckless redemption—not for the faint of heart.