Jessica Warman

THE LAST GOOD DAY OF THE YEAR

Bloomsbury, 2015

A new powerful thriller from the globally-embraced author of Between.

Ten years ago, in the early hours of New Year’s Day, seven-year-old Samantha and her next door neighbor, Remy, watched as a man broke into Sam’s home and took her younger sister, Turtle, from her sleeping bag. Remy and Sam, too afraid to intervene at the time, later identified the man as Sam’s sister Gretchen’s much older ex-boyfriend, Steven, who was sent to prison for Turtle’s murder.

Now, Sam’s shattered family is returning to her childhood home in an effort to heal. As long-buried memories begin to surface, Sam wonders if she and Remy accurately registered everything they saw. The more they re-examine the events of that fateful night, the more questions they discover about what really happened to Turtle.

Master storyteller Jessica Warman keeps readers guessing in this arresting page-turner.

BEAUTIFUL LIES

Bloomsbury, 2012

Rachel and Alice are an extremely rare kind of identical twins-so identical that even their aunt and uncle, whom they’ve lived with since their parents passed away, can’t tell them apart. But the sisters are connected in a way that goes well beyond their surfaces: when one experiences pain, the other exhibits the exact same signs of distress. So when one twin mysteriously disappears, the other immediately knows something is wrong-especially when she starts experiencing serious physical traumas, despite the fact that nobody has touched her. As the search commences to find her sister, the twin left behind must rely on their intense bond to uncover the truth. But is there anyone around her she can trust, when everyone could be a suspect? And ultimately, can she even trust herself? Master storyteller Jessica Warman will keep readers guessing when everything they see-and everything they are told-suddenly becomes unreliable in this page-turning literary thriller.

It’s the twins’ culturally barren, dreary yet violent world – a realm of broken dreams – that resonates most in this haunting, moody, character-driven thriller. — Kirkus

Warman uses a classic suspense story as the seed of something shimmeringly poignant and cunningly enigmatic. She draws the relationship between the sisters with lush, heartbreaking intensity, offering glimpses of its growth in flashbacks….There’s mystery upon mystery here, but they’re all imbued with tenderness and tragedy, and the final, supernaturally touched puzzle is genuinely surprising and original as well as seeped in sadness. Ultimately, Warman seems to specialize in intimacy made urgent by grief, and it’s that as much as the thrille rplot that readers will be left rememberg. — BCCB, Starred Review

BETWEEN

Bloomsbury, 2011

Bank Street’s Best Childrens Books of 2012

A 2012 IRA Young Adults Selection

YALSA’s Best of Books of 2012

Booklist’s Top 10 SF/Fantasy YA Books for 2011

Elizabeth Valchar—pretty, popular, and rich—wakes up the morning after her eighteenth birthday on the yacht where she’d been celebrating with her closest friends. A persistent thumping noise has roused her. When she goes to investigate, she finds her own drowned body is hitting the side of the boat. Liz is dead.

She has no memory of what happened to her, and can only observe in horror the fallout of her death. She’s also soon joined by Alex Berg, a quiet boy from her high school who was killed by a hit-and-run driver. The two keep each other company, floating in and out of memories and trying to piece together the details of what happened to each of them.

In her regular life, Liz was a runner. It wasn’t abnormal for her to run 8-10 miles per day. But as memories from closer to her death begin to surface, Liz finds that she’d been running much more than normal, and that she’d all but stopped eating. Liz’s mother, who died when Liz was nine, had battled with anorexia as well, and those around her worried Liz was following in her mother’s footsteps. But something more sinister was consuming Liz from the inside out. . . .

From critically acclaimed author Jessica Warman comes a shocking mystery, a heartbreaking character study, and ultimately a hopeful tale of redemption, love, and letting go.

Liz runs the gamut of strong emotion throughout this compelling backtrack of a short life punctuated by early grief, parental failings, and honest, flawed love; her journey offers insight into the effects all of these things can have on an ordinary life. It’s been a while since The Lovely Bones was in every high school backpack; this is a strong contender to take its place. — Starred Review, The Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books

The pacing is suspenseful and tense, pieces of the puzzle showing themselves at a compelling rate; the conclusion, during which all uncertainties are exposed in a chilling climax, is both tragic and satisfying. Warman seamlessly blends romance, mystery, suspense, and the supernatural in this exploration of innocence, guilt, and morality. — The Horn Book Magazine

WHERE THE TRUTH LIES

Bloomsbury, 2010

On the surface, Emily Meckler leads the perfect life. She has three best friends, two loving parents, and the ideal setup at the Connecticut prep school where her father is the headmaster. But Emily also suffers from devastating nightmares about fire and water, and nobody knows why. Then the enigmatic Del Sugar enters her life, and Emily is immediately swept away—but her passionate relationship with Del is just the first of many things that aren’t quite what they seem in Emily’s life. As the lies she’s been told start to unravel, Emily must set out to discover the truth regarding her nightmare; on a journey that will lead her to question everything she thought she knew about love, family, and her own idyllic past.

This companion novel to Warman’s critically acclaimed Breathless proves that sometimes the biggest lies are told to the people you love the most.

Emily’s unflinching, multilayered narration and realistic dialogue capture the wishes and fears that drive teens. A page-turner to the bittersweet ending.” –Kirkus Reviews, starred review

Warman sensitively portrays the sibling-like tensions and intimacy of boarding-school friendships. Most memorable, though, are passages that show how painful realizations often arrive: through isolated flashes of intuition and experience that layer slowly into three-dimensional truths.” —Booklist

BREATHLESS

Bloomsbury, 2009

Nominated by ALA as a Best Book for Young Adults

Booklist 2009 Top Ten Book in Religion & Spirituality

Booklist 2010 Top Ten Book in Sports for Youth

When Katie Kitrell is shipped off to boarding school by her distant father and overbearing mother, it doesn’t take her long to become part of the It Crowd. She’s smart, she’s cute, and she’s an Olympic-bound swimmer who has a first class ticket to any Ivy League school of her choice. But what her new friends, roommate, and boyfriend don’t know is that Katie is swimming away from her past, and from her schizophrenic older brother, Will, who won’t let her go. And when he does the unthinkable, it’s all Katie can do to keep her head above water.

Warman’s achingly realistic scenes and characters transcend cliché, and with rare, refreshing honesty and flashes of wry humor, she writes about the intimacy of boarding school, the anguish of family illness, finding a sense of self in sports and in life, and the small, mysterious, imperfect moments that add up to love in all its forms.” — Booklist, starred review

Warman treats Will’s schizophrenia with stark honesty as seen through his sister’s eyes….this novel provides an important look at an extremely difficult illness and its effects on a family.” –School Library Journal, starred review