We Lost the Summer

Harper Moore is her own worst enemy - she has a scholarship to escape Gnaw Bone and a vague idea of what comes next, and somehow, with her burning desire for freedom, that still isn't enough to get her out the door.

Gnaw Bone is the kind of small town nobody leaves. It's a place where Myrtle from across the street knows your business before you do, your dad barely looks up from his recliner, and the same faces show up at every bonfire until the summer you finally stop showing up altogether. Everyone's business is on display and Harper is becoming the center of attention.

Deacon Graves has always been her constant. Steady, infuriating, effortlessly there - the boy who climbed the tree to her window every time things got hard at home, and became a man she doesn't quite know how to look at anymore. He's got enough trouble keeping his father's messes from swallowing him whole without Harper adding to the list.

But the summer has other plans. Strange cars idle outside the Graves house. Flyers go up all over town and Harper becomes the punchline of a very public joke - one that pushes her and Deacon farther apart than either of them planned. And just when a fake relationship starts feeling too real, Harper happens across something about Deacon that makes her wonder if there was ever a future here at all.

She still has a scholarship. She still has a way out. The question is whether she has the nerve to take it.

We Lost the Summer is a slow-burn, small-town, best-friends-to-lovers romance about growing up, growing apart, and the people who make leaving feel like the bravest and most devastating thing you've ever done.