Effortlessly funny, incredibly poignant, and deliciously readable, KIND OF A BIG DEAL is Shannon Hale’s much-anticipated first YA outing for 5 years, and a one-of-a-kind novel that will suck you in – literally!

KIND OF A BIG DEAL
by Shannon Hale
Macmillan, August 2020

There’s nothing worse than peaking in high school. Nobody knows that better than Josie Pie. She was kind of a big deal ― she dropped out of high school to be a star! But the bigger you are, the harder you fall. And Josie fell. Hard. Ouch. Broadway dream: dead. Meanwhile, her life keeps imploding. Best friend: distant. Boyfriend: busy. Mom: not playing with a full deck? Desperate to escape, Josie gets into reading. Literally. She reads a book and suddenly she’s inside them. And with each book, she’s a different character: a post-apocalyptic heroine, the lead in a YA rom-com, a 17th century wench in a corset. It’s alarming. But also. . . kind of amazing? It’s the perfect way to live out her fantasies. Book after book, Josie the failed star finds a new way to shine. But the longer she stays in a story, the harder it becomes to escape. Will Josie find a story so good that she just stays forever?

Shannon Hale started writing books at age ten and never stopped, eventually earning an MFA in Creative Writing. After nineteen years of writing and dozens of rejections, she published The Goose Girl, the first in her award-winning Books of Bayern series. She has published 20+ books for young readers including the Newbery Honor winner Princess Academy. Her novels for the adult crowd include Austenland (now a major motion picture starring Keri Russell). Shannon and her husband Dean Hale have collaborated on several projects, such as Eisner-nominee Rapunzel’s Revenge. They spend non-writing hours corralling their four young children near Salt Lake City, Utah.