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Published Jul 2021
336 pages
Genre: Literary Fiction
Publication Information
From the author of You Should See Me in a Crown, Leah Johnson delivers a stunning novel about being brave enough to be true to yourself, and learning to find joy even when times are unimaginably dark.
Olivia is an expert at falling in love...and at being dumped. But after the fallout from her last breakup has left her an outcast at school and at home, she's determined to turn over a new leaf. A crush-free weekend at Farmland Music and Arts Festival with her best friend is just what she needs to get her mind off the senior year that awaits her.
Toni is one week away from starting college, and it's the last place she wants to be. Unsure about who she wants to become and still reeling in the wake of the loss of her musician-turned-roadie father, she's heading back to the music festival that changed his life in hopes that following in his footsteps will help her find her own way forward.
When the two arrive at Farmland, the last thing they expect is to realize that they'll need to join forces in order to get what they're searching for out of the weekend. As they work together, the festival becomes so much more complicated than they bargained for. Olivia and Toni will find that they need each other, and music, more than they ever could have imagined.
Packed with irresistible romance and irrepressible heart, bestselling author Leah Johnson delivers a stunning and cinematic story about grief, love, and the remarkable power of music to heal and connect us all.
"Johnson's strengths are on full display in snappy dialogue that sings, heart-stopping romance, and realistically flawed Black teen characters learning from their mistakes, one by one...a love letter to the healing power of music, enduring friendship, summertime love stories, and hard-won resilience." - Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"[T]he exploration of Olivia's tendency to adapt to others' expectations of her is wonderfully nuanced, and her relationship with Toni is delightfully swoon-y. A solid sophomore novel celebrating love that begs for a soundtrack." - Kirkus Reviews
"Rise to the Sun is a sweet, funny, and effervescent gem of a book." - Nicola Yoon, author of the #1 New York Times bestsellers The Sun is Also a Star and Everything, Everything
"Rise to the Sun is a novel that will show Black girls just how brightly they can shine, and that love, like music, is a True Thing." - Ashley Woodfolk, author of The Beauty that Remains and When You Were Everything
"Leah Johnson seamlessly harmonizes fear with hope, tragedy with healing, and betrayal wtih redemption. This book is an anthem for every queer Black teen who's ever been told they're underserving of their happy ending." - Julian Winters, award-winning author of Running with Lions
This information about Rise to the Sun was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Leah Johnson is a writer, editor and eternal Midwesterner, currently moonlighting as a New Yorker. She is a graduate of Indiana University and Sarah Lawrence College, where she received her MFA in fiction writing, and currently teaches in their undergraduate writing program. When she's not writing, you can usually find her on Twitter, ranting about pop culture and politics. She is the author of You Should See Me in a Crown and Rise to the Sun.
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