Like New York Times bestseller Reconstructing Amelia, a stunning debut about a young teenager on the brink and a parent desperate to find the truth before it’s too late.
Thirteen year old Callie is accused of bullying at school, but Rebecca knows the kind and gentle girl she’s raised is innocent. While Callie is eventually exonerated, threatening notes from her alleged victim, Robyn, begin to surface, and as the notes become suicidal, Rebecca is determined to save the unbalanced Robyn. As Rebecca navigates school disapproval and mean moms while trying to comfort Callie and help Robyn, she recalls her own intense betrayals and best-friendships at that age. Then, her failure to understand those closest to her led to losing them forever, and she’s determined that this story will end differently. But Rebecca has failed to understand what is really happening in Callie’s life, and now Callie is in terrible danger.
This raw and beautiful story investigates the intensity of adolescent emotions and the complex identity of a teenage girl. Hyacinth Girls looks unflinchingly at how cruelty exists in all of us, and how our worst impulses can sometimes estrange us from ourselves—or save us.
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“‘Do you know your children?’ Thus begins Hyacinth Girls, a book with razor-sharp teeth, a pumping heart, and wide-open eyes; a plunge into the secret, murky waters between the bullies and the bullied. In her debut, Lauren Frankel conjures up real girlhood, the kind you don’t read about in storybooks: complicated, troubling, and true.”
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Miranda Beverly-Whittemore, New York Times bestselling author of Bittersweet