A funny, thoughtful YA debut about going after what you really want and letting people love who you really are, perfect for fans of Jaye Robin Brown’s Georgia Peaches and Other Forbidden Fruit.
THE COMEDIENNE’S GUIDE TO PRIDE
by Hayli Thomson
Page Street Kids, June 2022
(via JABberwocky)
Wicked funny and hella gay, it’s time for Taylor Parker to come out about a lot of things. Taylor Parker has always been a funny girl―but when she is accepted as a finalist for a diverse writers’ internship at Saturday Night Live, it turns her life upside down. If she wants a shot at winning in a little more than a month, Taylor will have to come out about both of her secrets: She wants to be a comedian . . . and she’s a lesbian.
With a mom who gave up a career in comedy to raise her, and a comedian dad who left for a younger woman, working in comedy is a sore subject in Taylor’s house. To keep her secret under wraps, she sneaks out to do improv and hides her sketches under the bed, and to distract from her anxiety about the competition, Taylor
frequents Salem’s Museum of Witchcraft to pine for Abigail Williams from the back row.
It’s at the Museum of Witchcraft where Taylor falls deeper in love with the girl who plays Abigail Williams―Charlotte Grey, an out and proud lesbian at Nathaniel Hawthorne High. Charlotte radiates so much confidence in her acting and queerness that Taylor can’t resist her. So when Charlotte reaches out for help on a school project, Taylor readily agrees. As they spend more time together, Taylor sees what living her truth and pursuing her dreams could bring her, but Charlotte can’t understand why someone as funny as Taylor wouldn’t go all out to make the most of her opportunities. To live up to her own comedy dreams and become the person she wants to be, Taylor will have to find the confidence to tell everyone exactly who she is and what she wants.
Hayli Thomson lives in Sydney, Australia, and writes novels about candid characters for anybody who ever watched Jo March leap a fence and longed to be her best friend. Bizarrely, during her teen years, Hayli was afflicted with a “headache” every third Monday in September, when she was left with no option but to stay home from school and watch her favorite female comedians collect Emmys live on the other side of the world.
Forbidden magic, a family secret, and a night to reveal it all… 
Lydia Chass doesn’t mind living in a small town; she just doesn’t want to die in one. A lifetime of hard work has put her on track to attend a prestigious journalism program and leave Henley behind until a school error leaves her a credit short of graduating. Undeterred, Lydia has a plan to earn that credit: transform her listener friendly local history podcast into a hard hitting, truth telling expose. She’ll investigate the Long Stretch of Bad Days a week when Henley was hit by a tornado, a flash food, as well as its first and only murder, which remains unsolved. But Lydia needs help to bring grit to the show. Bristal Jamison has a bad reputation and a foul mouth, but she also needs a credit to graduate. The unexpected partnership brings together the Chass family name a pillar in the community and the rough and tumble Jamison’s, of whom Bristal hopes to be the first to graduate. Together, they dig into the town’s worst week, determined to solve the murder. Their investigation unearths buried secrets;a hidden brothel, lost family treasure, and a teen girl that disappeared. But the past is never far, and some don’t want it to see the light. As threats escalate, the girls have to uncover the truth before the dark history of Henley catches up with them.
When Jo lost her father three years earlier under mysterious circumstances, he began appearing in her dreams, beckoning her to London where he’d been the lead singer of an internationally acclaimed Beatles cover band. She has long been almost certain he isn’t really dead, but she can’t shake the feeling that something’s being kept from her. So when she has the opportunity to go to London, she jumps at the chance to follow his trail. Once in London, Jo meets Henry, a broody, Beatles-hating photographer who’s an intriguing mix of quantum physics and pseudoscience…and just might have the key to finding her father. Armed with an atlas of Britain’s supernatural ley lines and a tenuous friendship, they set out to uncover the truth and discover what they’ve grown to mean to each other.