Wicked Confessions

by Lauren Courcelle

Overview

Wouldn't it be nice to know what everyone is really thinking? What's truly important to them? Who they like? Who they don't? What's true and what's not? Who they are when nobody's watching? Their deepest, darkest secrets?

When two fourteen-year-olds take a walk in the woods on the first day of summer, only one comes back alive. The resultant guilt consumes Persephone Smith and causes her to withdraw into an isolated world of silence and black clothing, and the kids at school jeer, "Dead Girl." Her friends and family members have opposing views about ways to help her through her grief, but she remains at the center of their lives. Alas, her self-imposed prison renders those who love her helpless as they watch her make horrific decisions that could bring her to the same fate as her friend. In a world where angels, dragons, and unicorns exist, Persephone's naturally powerful allies will need to will or cast a happy and magical resolution before she completely self-destructs.

Life doesn't stop for death, but it does change everything for those who are left behind.

Wicked Confessions provides an abundance of transparency and insight into Persephone Smith's family, friends, fair-weather friends, and even foes. It picks up her story about a year after Wicked Dramatic ends, when the innocence of Diversity Middle School is only a distant memory. Sophomore year at Red Clover High School brings a whole new set of predicaments, dangers, heartbreaks, decisions, and jubilations. Some of the kids begin to drive, reach the age when their friendships are more valued than their families, embark on secret and not-so-secret romances, and occasionally, discover that the line between life and death can blur.

Join the people who know fourteen-year-old Persephone best as they share their wicked confessions (colorful language included) and say farewell forever to – not one, but – two of their Wicked Normal loved ones.

Wicked Confessions is the first Young Adult novel in this series.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781987017052
Publisher:	Barnes & Noble Press
Publication date:	12/20/2018
Series:	Persephone Smith , #5
Pages:	330
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.88(d)

About the Author

Lauren Courcelle has lived in Vermont all of her life, but if she admitted how long that is, she'd be revealing her age, so don't expect her to confess it! As a child, she wanted to be a teacher when she grew up (because she liked to write on the chalkboard), but as a teacher, she realized that being able to have a daily impact on students, particularly when inspiring them to become lifelong lovers of literature, was the best part of the job. She left the field for a few years to try her hand at phlebotomy, and although she rarely missed veins, she certainly missed her students and yearned to share great children's books with them once again. Her aspirations were bigger than merely reading to young people; she wanted to write for them, too, so in May 2011, she pursued her dream of writing a picture book. Nearly 400 pages later, a chapter book, surprisingly, emerged from her efforts. That book was Wicked Normal. With it, Lauren knew that protagonist Persephone Smith's story would be told via a twelve-book series. Having heard that traditional publishers frowned on authors marking their debut with a series, she opted to self-publish her first novel. She released the second book, Wicked Weird, less than six months later. The third, Wicked Awesome, was published within a year of the first. The fourth book of the series, Wicked Dramatic, marked Persephone's last year of middle school and the series' final "Middle Grades" novel, appropriate for precocious, younger readers (Ages 9+). Lauren wanted readers to have a series that could grow up with them (or vice versa), so she resumed the series with the tenth grade versions of the characters, via the Young Adult novel Wicked Confessions before handing Persephone the reins to narrate her junior year in the very romantic Wicked Together and her senior year in both Wicked Alpha and Wicked Omega - yes, the same year of Persephone's life, narrated by, indeed, the same protag, yet with two distinct sequences of events. (And no, Lauren will never again write two books with the same narrator and same year of story! Total nightmare!) She intended to release them simultaneously, but Wicked Alpha was ready over a year before Wicked Omega, so... the world is still waiting on that second seventh book. From there, the final five novels will journey to college and beyond. Lauren Courcelle still resides in Vermont and enjoys going to concerts, knitting scarves, making beaded jewelry, painting, and spending time with her family.