Tin Heart

A heart transplant means that Australian high schooler Marlowe is healthy for the first time in years, but she’s still the shy member of a family—with her vegan activist mother and costume-wearing little brother—that likes attention. Still, it’s hard to stay under the radar once she’s back in school, trying to make friends and deal with bullies, and gets caught up in an intense prank war with the adorable guy who works at the butcher’s next door to her mother’s vegan store. Could it be that she isn’t so shy after all? That being healthy means she needs to find out who she really is? Convinced that meeting her donor’s family will answer these questions, Marlowe barrels on despite their refusals, eventually getting caught in an elaborate lie and hurting the people she cares about most. Funny and direct, this book by Plozza (Frankie) is capable of balancing heartbreak, first love, mortality, and the absurd—or, as Marlowe puts it, “that moment when you’re standing in front of Bert’s Quality Butchers holding a speaker blasting ‘Meat Is Murder.’ ” Ages 14–up. Katelyn Detweiler, Jill Grinberg Literary Management. [em](Mar.) [/em]