Althea and Oliver

Cristina Moracho's whip-smart debut is an achingly real story about identity, illness, and love and why bad decisions are sometimes the only ones that lead to good. Spring 1996. Althea Carter and Oliver McKinley have been best friends since first grade, living on the same block in Wilmington, North Carolina. Now they're juniors, developing romantic feelings for each other—and then things go off the rails. Oliver contracts Kleine-Levin Syndrome, also known as 'Sleeping Beauty syndrome'; he's in bed for weeks at a time, and remembers nothing, especially not what he might do in the middle of an episode. What happens during one of those episodes shatters their friendship, and before they can talk about it, his mother enrolls him in a sleep study in Manhattan. He leaves without telling Althea. She follows him, and the surprising conclusion to their lifelong story will completely satisfy readers.