13 Ways to Say Goodbye

Nina always followed in the footsteps of her older sister Lily, until Lily died in an accident three years ago, leaving Nina alone with absent, grieving parents and unsympathetic friends. On the eve of her 13th birthday, Nina decides to spend five weeks of her summer in Paris with her aunt Renee, secretly working on Lily’s unfinished list of 13 things to do before turning 13 (“I have to finish/ what she started”). When she crosses off one of Lily’s uncompleted tasks, Nina is thrust into a magical, light-filled memory of a childhood fight with Lily. In Paris, Nina attends art classes where she meets—and crushes on—stylish peer Sylvie. As the summer progresses, Nina explores Paris with Sylvie, creates art, and visits memories of Lily, gradually working through her grief and forging a new path forward in a city where “old and new/ exist side by side.” This delicate verse novel by Fussner (The Song of Us), enhanced by judiciously employed magical underpinnings in a vividly rendered setting, is a nuanced portrait of a tween stepping out of her sister’s shadow and coming into her own. Sylvie has brown skin; Nina reads as white. Ages 8–12. Agent: Eric Smith, P.S. Literary. (Mar.)