Editorial Content for Tell Me Three Things
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Sixteen-year-old Jessie Holmes relocates to Los Angeles from Chicago with her dad less than two years after her mom’s death. Her new life includes a wealthy step-mother, a spoiled step-brother and privileged classmates. As Jessie begins her junior year at an elite private school, she finds herself homesick and lonely --- until she receives an anonymous email from an admirer. The trials and tears of losing a loved one and starting over unfold thoughtfully in the new young adult novel, TELL ME THREE THINGS.
"The trials and tears of losing a loved one and starting over unfold thoughtfully in the new young adult novel, TELL ME THREE THINGS."
Changing schools in the eleventh grade means fitting into a new “high school hierarchy,” and the midwest brunette bookworm doesn’t feel like she belongs anywhere at Wood Valley High. In fact, Jessie thinks she has entered a “jungle” where girls travel “like lionesses” in groups and where blond highlights and porcelain veneers are ubiquitous. Author Julie Buxbaum’s vivid description of a private school in Southern California “where everything is all shiny and expensive,” brings to mind the television show “Beverly Hills, 90210.” Wood Valley would make a glamorous setting for TV or film.
Of course, Jessie’s glamorous new home, her step-mother’s mansion, looks like it belongs in Architectural Digest, yet it lacks warmth and comfort. Jessie says she feels like she “[has] moved into a museum filled with strangers.” Without her mom, nothing seems normal. She calls her new living situation “a new, unidentifiable formation. A cockeyed parallelogram.” Eventually, the teen straightens out her relationships with her step-mom, Rachel, her step-brother, Theo and her father. The novel sensitively explores living in a “blended-family,” a common topic for many young readers.
And young readers will enjoy the teen romance, which develops throughout the novel. At the beginning of the school year, Jessie receives a mysterious email from someone calling himself Somebody Nobody (SN), who offers to act as her “virtual spirit guide” to Wood Valley High School. This online connection becomes a personal connection as the junior and her anonymous friend discover “three things” about each other each time they communicate. But is SN a secret soul mate or just some prank? Guessing the identity of SN kept me continuously reading TELL ME THREE THINGS.
Teaser
It’s been barely two years since her mother’s death, and because her father eloped with a woman he met online, Jessie has been forced to move across the country to live with her stepmonster and her pretentious teenage son. Just when she’s thinking about hightailing it back to Chicago, she gets an email from a person calling themselves Somebody/Nobody (SN for short), offering to help her navigate the wilds of Wood Valley High School.
Promo
It’s been barely two years since her mother’s death, and because her father eloped with a woman he met online, Jessie has been forced to move across the country to live with her stepmonster and her pretentious teenage son. Just when she’s thinking about hightailing it back to Chicago, she gets an email from a person calling themselves Somebody/Nobody (SN for short), offering to help her navigate the wilds of Wood Valley High School.
About the Book
What if the person you need the most is someone you’ve never met?
Julie Buxbaum mixes comedy and tragedy, love and loss, pain and elation, in her debut YA novel whose characters will come to feel like friends. Tell Me Three Things will appeal to fans of Rainbow Rowell, Jennifer Niven, and E. Lockhart.
“Three Things about this novel: (1) I loved it. (2) No, really, I LOVED it. (3) I wish I could tell every teen to read it. Buxbaum’s book sounds, reads, breathes, worries, and soars like real adolescents do.” —Jodi Picoult, New York Times bestselling author of Leaving Time and Off the Page
Everything about Jessie is wrong. At least, that’s what it feels like during her first week of junior year at her new ultra-intimidating prep school in Los Angeles. Just when she’s thinking about hightailing it back to Chicago, she gets an email from a person calling themselves Somebody/Nobody (SN for short), offering to help her navigate the wilds of Wood Valley High School. Is it an elaborate hoax? Or can she rely on SN for some much-needed help?
It’s been barely two years since her mother’s death, and because her father eloped with a woman he met online, Jessie has been forced to move across the country to live with her stepmonster and her pretentious teenage son.
In a leap of faith --- or an act of complete desperation --- Jessie begins to rely on SN, and SN quickly becomes her lifeline and closest ally. Jessie can’t help wanting to meet SN in person. But are some mysteries better left unsolved?
