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Bettina Vasilis can hardly believe it when star basketball player Brady Cullen convinces her strict father to let them date. That summer, Bettina falls in love with Brady and the freedom that comes along with him. But when school starts up again, Brady unexpectedly changes for the worse. Unable to give up on her first love just yet, she finds herself trapped in an abusive relationship.
Then she meets "Cowboy," a smoldering older guy and the last guy her father would approve. Yet he is everything Brady is not - gentle, caring, and interested in getting to know the real Bettina. When tragedy strikes, Bettina must tell her family the truth - and kiss goodbye the things she thought she knew about herself and the men in her life.
"Starred Review. Connor keeps her story completely realistic with fluid prose and convincing characters. Romance fans who happen upon this will find an absorbing portrait of abuse and recovery." - Kirkus
"Starred Review. Beautifully capturing the intensity of first love, Connor (Waiting for Normal ) draws readers into a world filled with Greek culture and punctuated by upsetting moments of abuse." - Publishers Weekly
"This novel is compulsively readable. The characters are well developed, the plot is compelling, and the ending plausible and satisfying. Bettina's Greek family is a welcome dimension to the complicated love triangle. Grades 9 and up." - School Library Journal
This information about The Things You Kiss Goodbye 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.
Leslie Connor is the author of several award-winning books for children, including Waiting for Normal, winner of the ALA Schneider Family Book Award, Crunch, Miss Bridie Chose a Shovel, and Dead on Town Line, a young adult novel in verse. She lives with her family in Connecticut.
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