The Quiet Part Out Loud

by Deborah Crossland Narrated by Piper Goodeve, Ali Andre Ali

Overview

A Good Morning America Buzz Pick

For fans of You've Reached Sam and A Heart in a Body in the World, this “moving and powerful” (Laura Namey Taylor, New York Times bestselling author of A Cuban Girl's Guide to Tea and Tomorrow) teen novel follows an ex-couple as they struggle to reunite in the wake of a devastating earthquake.

High school sweethearts Mia Clementine and Alfie Thanasis had a plan to escape their town for college in the east. Mia would leave her hard-core evangelical home for Sarah Lawrence College, and Alfie would have a new place to pursue his three loves: baseball, poetry, and Mia. But when Alfie got offered a scholarship to the University of San Francisco the same week the entire town found out about Mia's mom's affair with their church's pastor, Mia's world imploded and she pushed everyone away...including Alfie.

Five months after the worst summer ever, Mia is crashing at her best friend's dorm at San Francisco State, just a few miles away from the University of San Francisco, praying she never runs into the boy whose heart she broke. And Alfie is trying to make the most of his freshman year while struggling to reconcile with the abrupt ending of his first love.

When Mia and Alfie's paths cross for the briefest of moments, Mia realizes she never should have let him go and Alfie's suppressed memories and feelings boil to the surface. But their reunion is cut short when a massive earthquake rocks San Francisco, leaving them to stumble desperately across the rubble in search of the ex they still love before the city crumbles-taking one, or both, of them with it.

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly

04/17/2023

Eighteen-year-old, white-coded Mia Clementine must navigate sudden natural disaster to atone for past mistakes in Crossland’s enlightening debut. Following a public scandal involving her mother’s affair with her town’s pastor, Mia has spent the past five months running away from her strict evangelical Christian upbringing. She’s also been avoiding her sweet, accommodating white-coded ex-boyfriend, Alfie Thanasis. But after she runs into him at a coffee shop and flees, Mia yearns to make amends. She reaches out to him via phone call, and the two teens are tentatively reconnecting when a massive earthquake hits, separating them once again. As Mia sets out onto San Francisco’s devastated streets to find Alfie, she encounters strangers along the way who dispense advice that forces her to confront her isolating behaviors. Alternating chapters featuring Alfie’s second-person perspective as he lovingly recounts his and Mia’s relationship, while Mia’s reflective yet stubborn first-person voice drives the present-day timeline. The novel’s drawn-out pacing diminishes suspense, and Mia’s slim characterization makes some revelations feel unearned. Even so, the fully realized, intersectionally diverse supporting cast and fervent discussions about religion imbue this surreal-feeling character study with intensity. Ages 12–up. Agent: Mollie Glick, CAA. (June)

Booklist

"Emotions enhanced by terror run high, leading to a draining, heartbreaking conclusion. Readers will undoubtedly love or hate the ending, indicating the depth and power of the narrative and the characters."

 New York Times bestselling author of A Cuban Laura Taylor Namey

The Quiet Part Out Loud brilliantly navigates an emotional journey through the stages of love and forgiveness, heartbreak and hope. The kind of book that lingers beyond its pages. Moving and powerful.

New York Times bestselling author Laura Taylor Namey

The kind of book that lingers beyond its pages. Moving and powerful.”

Kirkus Reviews

2023-03-29
Just as former teen lovers reconnect, a natural disaster rips them apart.

Five months after torching her relationship with Alfie Thanasis; running away from her parents, who divorced following a scandal; and giving up her spot at Sarah Lawrence College, 18-year-old Mia Clementine is crashing in her best friend Simi’s college dorm room in San Francisco and looking for a job. She runs into Alfie in a coffee shop with another girl and flees—but later phones him only to have the call disconnect as a massive earthquake rolls through the city. Mia, initially joined by Simi, embarks on an epic quest through the rubble to find Alfie. As Mia meets people who influence both her physical and spiritual journeys, the trip starts to take on a mythic dimension, while, in alternating chapters, Alfie unspools the tangled story of their relationship. Although religious faith is an important part of the story, both Mia’s parents’ Evangelical Christianity and Alfie’s parents’ Greek Orthodoxy are treated one-dimensionally. It’s initially hard to invest in Mia despite Simi’s and Alfie’s affection for her, so her gradual transformation into a more evolved and aware person isn’t as believable and doesn’t have the emotional impact it should. The tear-jerker ending adds to the overall sense that this is a book to elicit emotion rather than evoke it. Mia and Alfie are White; Simi is a Punjabi Sikh American, and supporting characters reflect the diversity of the setting.

A teen melodrama without sufficient depth. (Fiction. 12-16)

Product Details

BN ID:	2940176831573
Publisher:	Simon & Schuster
Publication date:	06/27/2023
Edition description:	Unabridged

Read an Excerpt

1. Alfie Alfie
I DON’T KNOW WHY YOU’RE here in San Francisco and not in New York like you planned, or why it hurts so much that you didn’t tell me.

After last summer, I don’t know a lot of things.

I can’t tell you what the weather was like that day when I first noticed you in sophomore gym. I can’t remember everything about the way you made the required uniform shorts and T-shirt your own or exactly how you wore your brown curls. But I do know how brave you were when you helped that girl. Everyone laughed and pointed as she stood there frozen. Then you ripped off your hoodie and wrapped it around her waist, covering the back of her shorts. The whole time, you kept your expression so deliberate and your voice so matter-of-fact.

“Girls bleed. Get over yourself.”

If I say the way you looked at me as you ushered her into the locker room—daring me to laugh or feel sorry—caused tiny electric shocks to prickle my cheeks and shoulders and arms, you’d roll your eyes and tell me to quit being so dramatic.

You never saw it, but you were always so fierce, bearing witness to everyone and everything around you—everyone but yourself. You buried everything. Your emotions twisted so deep, they made a tornado of intentions. For me, it was always easy to get lost in the storm.

I’d hoped maybe after all this time, that would have changed.

But you brushed past me at the coffee shop today, as easily as you brushed aside everything we’d become. Seeing you after so long—feeling the electricity that tingled on my skin when your eyes met mine—I realized I would still happily weather all of it for you.

Your only-child life seemed so sterile next to my big, messy family, yet you carried so much more around. I never understood how you could live with all that noise in your head.

The entire year we were together, we were sprinting toward an end, never realizing what existed beyond the finish line.

But even then, we both knew we couldn’t keep up the race forever.

And if seeing you today in that crowded coffee shop is the last time, it’ll be enough to know you’ve found another path to explore.

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