When We Ride
A Novel
WW Norton · Print & ebook · March 25, 2025
Rex Ogle explores bonds of loyalty and friendship and how they’re tested by drugs and violence in this propulsive novel-in-verse.
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- Who it’s for
- Straightforward, gritty, and built to keep you reading without fuss.
- Genres
- Novels in Verse for Teens, Addiction & Substance Use for Teens, Friendship for Teens
- Published
- WW Norton, March 25, 2025
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Rex Ogle explores bonds of loyalty and friendship and how they’re tested by drugs and violence in this propulsive novel-in-verse. Diego Benevides works hard. His single mother encourages him to stay focused on school, on getting into college, on getting out of their crumbling neighborhood. That’s why she gave him her car. Diego’s best friend, Lawson, needs a ride—because Lawson is dealing. As long as Diego’s not carrying, not selling, it’s cool. It’s just weed.
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But when Lawson starts carrying powder and pills and worse, their friendship is tested and their lives are threatened. As the lines between dealer and driver blur, everything Diego has worked for is jeopardized, and he faces a deadly reckoning with the choices he and his best friend have made. Award-winning memoirist and poet Rex Ogle’s searing first novel-in-verse is an unforgettable story of the power and price of loyalty.
Hard-Edged Momentum
Straightforward, gritty, and built to keep you reading without fuss.
Come here for
- ground-level teen realism
- fast, sustained immersion
Expect
- heavy social pressure
- contemporary teen life
Where it sits
| Addiction & Substance Use for Teens | 84% |
|---|---|
| Friendship for Teens | 72% |
| Novels in Verse for Teens | 60% |
Percentages are BookFrontier’s reading of the book.
Publisher categories
- Diverse YA Fiction
- Addiction & Substance Use for Teens
- Peer Pressure for Teens
- Authors
- Rex Ogle
- Publisher
- WW Norton
- Published
- March 25, 2025
- Format
- Print & ebook
- Reading lane
- Diverse YA Fiction