So many books come out each week that it makes it hard to decide what to read. We want to make that a little bit easier on you by sharing our favorite releases from the week and telling you our top 3 reasons why we think you’ll love them too!
This week our selection is The Heartbeats of Wing Jones by Katherine Webber. Are you ready to hear more about this book and its author? Here we go…
The Heartbeats of Wing Jones by Katherine Webber Published by Delacorte Books for Young Readers, Random House on March 14th, 2017
Genres: Contemporary, Magical Realism
Pages: 336
Goodreads Buy the Book
Jandy Nelson meets Friday Night Lights in this sweeping, warm, arrestingly original novel about family, strength, and hope.
Wing Jones, like everyone else in her town, has worshipped her older brother, Marcus, for as long as she can remember. Good-looking, popular, and the star of the football team, Marcus is everything his sister is not.
Until the night everything changes when Marcus, drunk at the wheel after a party, kills two people and barely survives himself. With Marcus now in a coma, Wing is crushed, confused, and angry. She is tormented at school for Marcus’s mistake, haunted at home by her mother and grandmothers’ grief. In addition to all this, Wing is scared that the bank is going to repossess her home because her family can’t afford Marcus’s mounting medical bills.
Every night, unable to sleep, Wing finds herself sneaking out to go to the school’s empty track. When Aaron, Marcus’s best friend, sees her running one night, he recognizes that her speed, skill, and agility could get her spot on the track team. And better still, an opportunity at a coveted sponsorship from a major athletic gear company. Wing can’t pass up the opportunity to train with her longtime crush and to help her struggling family, but can she handle being thrust out of Marcus’s shadow and into the spotlight?
3 Reasons You Should Read…
The Heartbeats of Wing Jones
by Katherine Webber
- We love picking up books from debut authors, and we love it even more when we like what we find inside the pages of a book by a debut author. This one falls in that category.
- If you’re looking for a contemporary YA, with a touch of magical realism and some awesome diversity- then this is the book you’ve been looking for!
- Characters. You know we are big on them, you know it can make or break a story for us. In this case we can already tell you that you’re going to love Wing. A lot.
***Meet Katherine Webber***
Katherine Webber was born in Southern California in 1987. She has lived in Hong Kong, Hawaii, and Atlanta. She currently lives in London with her husband, Kevin.
She loves an adventure, whether it is found in a book or in real life. She has travelled to over 45 countries. Travel, books, and eating out are her favourite indulgences.
Katherine studied Comparative Literature at the University of California, Davis and Chinese literature and language at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. She has worked at an international translation company, a technology startup, and, most recently, a London based reading charity.
Wing Jones is her first novel. Katherine is represented by Claire Wilson at Rogers, Coleridge and White.
Those are awesome reasons to read this book. I totally agree. I would even add that the writing is also quite lovely. At times, I couldn’t help but compare it to the beauty of Jandy Nelson.
Sam @ WLABB