The Astonishing Color of After
Little, Brown Books for Young Readers · Paperback · March 19, 2019
A Time Magazine 100 Best YA Books of All Time Selection "Emily X.R. Pan's brilliantly crafted, harrowing first novel portrays the vast spectrum of love and grief with heart-wrenching beauty and candor.
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- Who it’s for
- A grief-centered YA read with emotional weight and a lived-in, searching feel.
- Genres
- Death & Grief for Teens, Teen Suicide, Mental Illness for Teens
- Published
- Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, March 19, 2019
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Start with this bookAbout this book
A Time Magazine 100 Best YA Books of All Time Selection "Emily X.R. Pan's brilliantly crafted, harrowing first novel portrays the vast spectrum of love and grief with heart-wrenching beauty and candor. This is a very special book." –John Green, bestselling author of The Fault in Our Stars and Turtles All the Way Down A stunning, heartbreaking novel about grief, love, and family, perfect for fans of Jandy Nelson and Celeste Ng.
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Leigh Chen Sanders is absolutely certain about one thing: When her mother died by suicide, she turned into a bird. Leigh, who is half Asian and half white, travels to Taiwan to meet her maternal grandparents for the first time. There, she is determined to find her mother, the bird. In her search, she winds up chasing after ghosts, uncovering family secrets, and forging a new relationship with her grandparents. And as she grieves, she must try to reconcile the fact that on the same day she kissed her best friend and longtime secret crush, Axel, her mother was taking her own life. Alternating between real and magic, past and present, friendship and romance, hope and despair, The Astonishing Color of After is a stunning and heartbreaking novel about finding oneself through family history, art, grief, and love.
Grief, Closely Held
A grief-centered YA read with emotional weight and a lived-in, searching feel.
Come here for
- grief handled with care
- YA emotional intensity, not sugarcoating
Expect
- heavy feelings, teen-focused
- multigenerational family threads
Where it sits
| Teen Suicide | 60% |
|---|---|
| Death & Grief for Teens | 42% |
| Mental Illness for Teens | 28% |
Percentages are BookFrontier’s reading of the book.
Publisher categories
- Contemporary YA Fantasy
- Death & Grief for Teens
- Teen Suicide
- Authors
- Emily X.R. Pan
- Publisher
- Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
- Published
- March 19, 2019
- Format
- Paperback
- Reading lane
- Contemporary YA Fantasy