Amphibian

Wetherall’s moving debut centers on a pair of preteen girls as they attempt to break free of their unhappy lives in 1990s London. Sissy Savos, 11, is considered “strange until proven otherwise” by the kids at her new school, partly because of her web-toed feet. Popular girl Tegan, 12, first notices Sissy when she stands up to a bully on the schoolyard. The girls bond over their family troubles—Sissy’s father is absent and Tegan’s mother is emotionally distant—and they spend increasing amounts of time together during sleepovers and hours-long online chat sessions. The chat rooms provide them with a liberating if dangerous way to escape from their lives by pretending to be older teens or divorcées (“We tell each of these boys (who are probably old men pretending to be boys) a different story, and each of them believes us,” Sissy narrates). After a girl goes missing in the neighborhood, they begin to exercise caution. Wetherall’s authentic coming-of-age story taps into the emotional intensity of girlhood and makes palpable her protagonists’ aching desire to lose their innocence. Readers will be eager to see what Wetherall does next. (Oct.)