A sweet, queer rom-com about the head of the high school stage crew and the show’s lead actress, perfect for fans of Becky Albertalli and Nina LaCour.
THE LOVE CURSE OF MELODY MCINTYRE
by Robin Talley
HarperCollins Teen, December 2020
Credit: Courtney Rae Rawls
Melody McIntyre, stage manager extraordinaire, has a plan for everything. Lead actor need a breath mint? She’s on it. Understudy bust a seam? Mel’s sewing kit is at the ready. Not only is her Plan A foolproof, she’s got a Plan B, and a Plan C, because actors can be total fools. What she doesn’t have? Success with love. Every time she falls for someone during a school performance, both the romance and the show end in catastrophe. So, Mel swears off love until their upcoming production of Les Mis is over. Of course, Mel didn’t count on Odile Rose, rising star in the acting world, auditioning for the spring performance. And she definitely didn’t expect Odile to be sweet, and funny, and care as much about the play’s success as Mel. Which means that Melody McIntyre’s only plan now is trying desperately not to fall in love.
Robin Talley is a queer author who grew up in southwest Virginia and now lives in Washington, D.C., with her wife and their daughter. She worked in digital communications for LGBTQ rights, women’s rights, educational equity, and other progressive causes for fifteen years before she turned to writing full-time, and is now the New York Times-bestselling author of five novels for teen readers: Pulp, Our Own Private Universe, As I Descended, What We Left Behind, and Lies We Tell Ourselves.
Also Available: Robin Talley’s upcoming novel, MUSIC FROM ANOTHER WORLD, will be published by Inkyard Press on March 31st, 2020. Set in the 1970s to a soundtrack of Bowie, Blondie and a whole lot of Patti Smith, two teenage girls’ worlds converge in ways they could never have imagined. With a fierce sense of rebellion and a feminist attitude to boot, they soon discover what it means to be their true selves, and one thing’s for sure: they’re both sick of blending in.
Last year, Alina Kane was a ballet dancer who was accepted into one of the country’s top programs on a professional track. Then, she shattered her leg. This year, Alina has two metal plates holding her bones together, exactly one friend, and zero chance of a ballet career. She is an aimless high school junior who got roped into doing the spring musical because her previous coping mechanisms (namely laying in bed eating Cool Ranch Doritos while watching contraband ballet videos) were ‘depressing everyone around her.’ And when she is cast in a sexy role opposite Jude, the (charmingly? annoyingly?) laidback lead, it seems she must transform from a ballet swan into someone else entirely. As she starts to get used to her new normal, Alina begins to re-examine her broken dream. Maybe ballet wasn’t the beautiful thing she always thought it was. Maybe it didn’t give half-Japanese girls like her the same chances it gave to white girls. Maybe it made her afraid to speak up. The problem is, Alina still loves ballet. But now she wonders if it’s stupid to love something she can’t do anymore. If it’s wrong to love something that’s so flawed. And if it’s bad to fall in love with someone when her heart was just broken, along with her leg. 
Claire used to love her dad’s fantastical stories, especially tales about her absent mom—who could be off with the circus or stolen by the troll king, depending on the day. But now that she’s 12, Claire thinks she’s old enough to know the truth. When her dad sells the house and moves her and her brother into a converted van, she’s tired of the tall tales and refuses to pretend it’s all some grand adventure, despite how enthusiastically her little brother embraces this newest fantasy. Claire is faced with a choice: Will she play along with the stories her dad is spinning for her little brother, or will she force her family to face reality once and for all? Equal parts heartwarming and heartbreaking, WRONG WAY SUMMER is a road-trip journey and coming-of-age story about one girl’s struggle to understand when a lie is really a lie and when it’s something more: hope.
When seventeen-year-old competitive diver Ingrid freezes up at a routine meet and sustains a head injury, her orderly life is turned upside down. Diving wasn’t just her ticket to a full-ride scholarship and the focus of her life thus far, it was also her last connection to her dad, who left many years ago for a more glamorous life (and family). Now housebound and sedentary on doctor’s orders, Ingrid can’t sleep and is haunted by the question of what triggered her uncharacteristic stage fright. 
At Claflin Academy, college admissions are killer… Even at a famed boarding school, only a select few are accepted into each Ivy League college. Olivia, Avery, Emma, Sierra, and Margot are the five girls at Claflin Academy destined to attend the top Ivy Leagues. Bound together by more than just perfect test scores, they’ve also assured their entry into the Ivy of their choice by destroying anyone who gets in their way. But what’s a little backstabbing among friends?