Waiting on Wednesday is a weekly meme hosted by Jill at Breaking the Spine. Its purpose is to spotlight eagerly-anticipated upcoming releases.
This week I’m eagerly awaiting:
When You Were Here by Daisy Whitney
Expected Release Date: June 4, 2013
Danny’s mother lost her five-year battle with cancer three weeks before his graduation-the one day that she was hanging on to see.
Now Danny is left alone, with only his memories, his dog, and his heart-breaking ex-girlfriend for company. He doesn’t know how to figure out what to do with her estate, what to say for his Valedictorian speech, let alone how to live or be happy anymore.
When he gets a letter from his mom’s property manager in Tokyo, where she had been going for treatment, it shows a side of his mother he never knew. So, with no other sense of direction, Danny travels to Tokyo to connect with his mother’s memory and make sense of her final months, which seemed filled with more joy than Danny ever knew. There, among the cherry blossoms, temples, and crowds, and with the help of an almost-but-definitely-not Harijuku girl, he begins to see how it may not have been ancient magic or mystical treatment that kept his mother going. Perhaps, the secret of how to live lies in how she died.
(summary via Goodreads)
Daisy Whitney is definitely a name to watch in YA, and this book has been getting good buzz from librarians and book bloggers I trust. I love a good YA novel with a male perspective, and this one looks to be pretty good. It’s going to be a tear-jerker, I think, but it also combines some of my favorite elements: travel, a mystery, and growth. I definitely can’t wait to read this one.
What are you waiting on this week?
SO SO excited for this. I know like nothing about Japan as a place and not just where manga and anime and sushi are from. Love seeing it represented in YA!