Secrets, music, and a life-altering choice: will she risk everything?
Iz Beaufort—a feisty and talented foster kid—is in the music school of her dreams at last and in a genuinely good foster home for the first time. But she’s on high alert every minute, creativity blocked, feeling like an imposter. She’s hiding secrets about what happened in a past foster home, knowing that if they come out, everything in her new life will be destroyed.
Iz starts a music outreach for kids at risk, seeking to earn her new life by giving back. She’s overwhelmed at first by the chaos of the young people but gradually, with the help of her school group Manifesto (and Teo, the cute boy she sort of kissed last summer and then ghosted), forms them into an actual community of collaborative, caring, thoughtful creators. She gets more than she bargained for, though, when a young foster kid named Skye discloses a dark secret. Suddenly Iz’s own memories of That Place are triggered. She backs away from Skye’s words, even though she knows that by doing so, she’s betraying everything she’s tried to instil in the kids in the music outreach.
Only when Skye does something desperate, does Iz gather her own courage, look darkness in the face, and make a decision that will change her whole world. It’s an act of desperate fierceness, of compassion, of almost sacrificial protection. It may lead to Iz’s own downfall. But it may also open her up, at last, to a world beyond secrets and fear. It may pave the way for friendship and even love.
