Dreamers Often Lie

Liar meets Romeo and Juliet in this Shakespeare-inspired young adult novel about whether to trust yourself when everyone is telling you your instincts are wrong—for fans of Holly Black, Laini Taylor, andBlack Swan, by New York Times bestselling author Jacqueline West.

Jaye wakes up in the hospital, disoriented, and beset by a slippery morphing of reality into something else. She repeatedly sees a boy who she feels like she knows—but that's impossible. Determined to get back to school and back toA Midsummer Night's Dream, in which she's starring, she lies to her sister, her mom, and her doctors—she’s fine, she says. She’s fine, she’s fine, she’s fine. But then on her first day back, she takes a seat in class . . . next to the mysterious boy. Queasy with anxiety ("I can’t see you," she hisses at him, "because you’re not really here"), Jaye realizes this boy is, in fact, real. And he has no idea what she's talking about. Caught between this fascinating, empathetic new kid and her childhood friend turned recent love interest, Jaye begins to notice unnerving similarities between her circumstances and those of some of Shakespeare's most famous plays. Secret kisses, tingling banter, and clandestine meet-ups give way to darker, muddier incidents. As things escalate to a frightening pitch, how much of what's happening is real, how much is in Jaye's head, and how much does it matter as she's hurtling toward a fateful end over which she seems to have no control?

A two-time Pushcart nominee for poetry, Jacqueline West is the author of the kid- and critic-beloved middle-grade series, The Books of Elsewhere. Jacqueline lives amid the bluffs of Red Wing, Minnesota, with her husband, son, and their dog, Brom Bones. This is her sixth novel, her first for teens.