A heartbreaking yet hopeful novel about one girl’s journey through grief and the family, first love, and shocking truths she finds on the other side—perfect for fans of Jandy Nelson and Every Last Word.
EVERY REASON TO STAY
by Lane Clarke
Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, July 2026
(via Park, Fine & Brower)
All her life, it’s just been sixteen-year-old Skylar and her rockstar dad against the world. But this year, a horrible accident cuts the summer short and upends her life.
As Skylar grieves her dad, she discovers a huge secret: her mother is still alive. Now, Skylar is uprooted from her home and thrust into a family of strangers on the other side of the country. Furious with the mother who deserted her, she seeks comfort in her baking and decides to enter a local competition with a dazzling prize of a trip to a Parisian pastry school. As she gains her footing in the contest and her new town, she befriends a girl who seems just as lost as her, and she also finds more than friendship in the frustratingly irresistible boy next door. But as Skylar bakes her way to a brighter future, she’ll uncover truths about the past in the last place she expected.
Filled with heaps of emotion, a spoonful of hope, and an unexpected twist of fate, this is a powerful story about the true meaning of home.
Lane Clarke is a lawyer, an associate literary agent with Ultra Literary, and the author of Love Times Infinity. She lives in Virginia with her husband, daughter, and fur babies.
Navigating junior year, Michie is struggling to answer the question of who she is for her scholarship essays, the only chance she has at making it into Brown as a first-generation college student. Or maybe it’s not so much that Michie doesn’t know who she is as it is that she doesn’t like who she is: having been estranged from her mother from the age of five and surrendered to her grandmother, Michie has made an art of hiding, especially from herself. After all, if her own mother doesn’t think she’s worthy of love, who will?