People Like Us

Lola Sinley has always known how to play her part.

In the fall of her senior year, she is the golden girl of the small Southern town of Woodland-pretty, charming, dating the preacher's son, and careful to keep the cracks in her life hidden beneath white dresses and practiced smiles. Everyone expects her future to be simple: a marriage to the preachers son, blind obedience, and a life built on appearances.

But outcast August Brooks isn't impressed by any of it.

Sarcastic, watchful, and content with being second place in her life, August is everything Lola has been taught to avoid. He sees through the performance she gives the world-and worse, he makes her want to be seen. What begins as reluctant afternoons studying soon becomes something far more dangerous: honesty, desire, and the terrifying possibility of acceptance.

Ten years later, with an invitation to her high school reunion, Lola uncovers the relics of the girl she used to be. As old poetry, repressed memories, and unfinished stories rise to the surface, she is forced to confront the choices that shaped her life-and the boy who first taught her that love can cost you everything.

Set against the heat and hush of the rural South, this is a haunting coming-of-age story about acceptance, longing, class, and the versions of ourselves we leave behind.