Sarah Dessen meets Nick Hornby in this poignant, uplifting novel about a small town that comes together to save its local independent bookstore.
Eighteen-year-old Aaron Stein feels like a dinosaur carrying out his life after the asteroid has hit. Over the past year and a half, his brother died from an overdose, his mother took off, and Aaron himself has given up his dreams of college to stay in a crumbling small-town bookstore with his dad. When Aaron sees the opportunity to sell the bookstore and get out, he jumps at it. But he didn't account for Chad, a "best life" bro with a wheelchair and way too much optimism. He didn’t account for the town's out-of-work lumberjacks-most of whom have never read a book in their lives, and none of them were providing support when the Stein family fell apart-taking on the failing bookstore as their cause célèbre. And he certainly didn't account for Hannah, a punk musician with addiction problems of her own, who just might change the way Aaron sees the whole world. Aaron has always thought of the bookstore as his albatross, the dying remnants of a life that he can no longer have. But maybe extinction isn't such a tragedy, after all. Maybe extinction can even be the start of something new.
