Today we’re spotlighting Who We Were in the Dark by Jessica Taylor!
Read on for more about Jessica and her book!
Meet Jessica Taylor:
Jessica Taylor adores atmospheric settings, dangerous girls, and characters who sneak out late at night. She lives in Northern California with a few degrees she isn’t using, one dog, and many teetering towers of books.
Follow her on Twitter at @JessicaTaylorYA and check out her website at www.jessicataylorwrites.com
About the Book: Who We Were in the Dark
“Will have you hooked from the start and guessing till the very end. Jessica Taylor aces it. I inhaled this one!” —Jennifer Mathieu, author of Moxie, now a Netflix Original Film.
For fans of Suicide Notes from Beautiful Girls, The Liars of Mariposa Island, and Genuine Fraud, this coming-of-age mystery/thriller asks, How do you find someone you never really knew?
Donner Lake is famous for its dazzling waters, dramatic mountains, and the travelers trapped there long ago who did unspeakable things to survive. But for lonely Nora Sharpe, Donner was where a girl named Grace glided into her life one night and exploded her world.
After that, every summer, winter, and spring break, Nora, her brother, Wesley, the enigmatic Grace, and their friend Rand left behind their real lives and reunited at Donner Lake. There, they traded truth and lies. They fell in love. They pushed each other too far. They came to know one another better than anyone in some ways, and not at all in others.
But two years later, something has happened to destroy them. Grace is missing. And Nora must find her way through the unspoken hurts and betrayals of the last two years—and find her way back to Wesley and Rand—to figure out what exactly happened to Grace, the girl she thought she knew.
~Excerpt~
Only one house stood close by, a few hundred feet up and across the road, away from the faraway black expanse of shiny Donner Lake. Everything was quiet and dim inside. No signs of life.
Lights salted the windows of a few homes across the lake. The houses were as small as tiny lanterns from where I stood watching from the window. Our cabin—Kevin’s—it must have looked like a dollhouse to the people on the other side. I wondered if I was small enough that they couldn’t even see me.
A creak rippled through the wind. In the sole nearby home, an upstairs light flicked on. The window opened.
I ducked behind the drapes.
A heave and huff from a small voice made me peek out into the night. A scuffle from between the curtains, and one jean-clad leg swung out. Then the other. A girl scaled the tree branch and slid down the trunk.
She tucked her copper hair behind her ear as she touched down on the ground. She wore it in a messy, slept-in way that would have made her look like an extra in the cast of Les Mis—a wretched street waif with style.
“Hey!” she said into the night. She stomped down the road, closer to Kevin’s cabin. Closer. She looked right up at me. “Hey, you.”
My fingers froze to the windowsill. I’d moved out from behind the curtains without thinking. I opened my mouth, but no words were there.
“You going to keep standing there or you going to come out with me?” she asked.
I’d snuck out once before, one night when I couldn’t calm Mom down. Wesley’d come after me, freaking out at me the whole way home.
“I—”
“You shouldn’t. You can’t. You couldn’t possibly,” she said. “Those are the words standing between you and the night of your life. Ask yourself this: What will you regret more at sunrise—coming with me or staying here?”
Her words were a lit match.
“I’m . . .”
“You’re what?” she asked.
A thousand things—pissed off, jealous. Alone. But none of them the answer I wanted. Nora Sharpe, what was I?
The lit match tipped.
“I’m . . . I’m coming.”
And as I lifted the sash higher, something inside me ignited, unfolding in a silent burst. I had one leg out the window before I’d thought it through. I didn’t care. I didn’t want to have regrets at sunrise.
The ten feet standing between me and owning my own life were a problem.
“The trellis,” the girl said. “Use it like a ladder.”
My biceps ached within seconds of grabbing hold of the thing. The toes of my shoes almost didn’t fit in the gaps. I pulled away from an exposed nail, and the sawing rip of fabric filled my ears.
I finally clattered to the ground, where the girl gave me the up-down. “That climb was iffy,” she said. “But you really stuck the landing.”
I huffed out a laugh.
The torn pocket of my jeans flapped open. I tried to tuck it in, thought of the money I’d need for a new pair, the Target in Reno that Kevin said he’d drive me to, and the greater cost of letting him do something for me after all these years of nothing.
“Come on,” she said. “We can’t stand in the road all night, Nora. It’s Nora, right? We’ve got a friend waiting.”
“Yeah, Nora.” I stuffed my hands into the pockets of my hoodie.
“Wait, what are we—we’re meeting someone?”
A quick glance and a smirk, then the girl’s steps were brisk as she pointed herself up the road toward the top of the hill. I jolted after her.
Her flats were a light gold leather that winked as she walked under the one streetlamp illuminating the mountain road. The jeans she wore were an expensive brand I’d tried on at the mall once—only on a whim. I could have bought three months’ worth of school lunches for that price.
These cabin kids. They had money.
I glanced at her, but she gave away nothing.
“I’m Nora,” I said when we were well past Kevin’s cabin.
“We covered that.” She smiled—she had two sharp eyeteeth that gave her a fierce, mischievous look—and pointed to herself. “Grace Lombardi.”
The freedom felt good. I liked it out here—traveling the road cut through the forest, under the sway of a new stranger who also liked to sneak out late at night—tethered to nothing, not Mom, not Kevin. Not Wesley. Breathing in the cool pine air, clear and deep enough to fill any emptiness inside me.
Title: Who We Were in the Dark
Author: Jessica Taylor
Publisher: Dial Books
Release Date: July 5, 2022
