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Where We Began
Paperback
Publisher: Independently Published
Published: Sep 25 2026
Pages: 434
Weight: 1.27
Height: 0.88 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
WHERE WE BEGAN
For readers of Alice Oseman and Jennifer Niven, Where We Began is a powerful contemporary YA novel about first love, betrayal, disability, resilience and finding the courage to reclaim your future.
Seventeen-year-old Freya Frampton is tired of being judged before anyone takes the time to know her.
Living with cerebral palsy means attracting stares, whispers and assumptions about what she can and cannot do. But Freya refuses to let other people decide the limits of her life. Creative, ambitious and determined, she dreams of studying fashion at university and building a future defined by her talent rather than her disability.
Then she meets Ashley Pavey.
Blue-grey eyes. Funny, confident and effortlessly popular. Ashley makes Freya laugh, challenges her and, most importantly, seems to see the girl everyone else overlooks.
For the first time, Freya allows herself to believe she can have everything she wants: independence, ambition, love-and Ashley.
But Ashley is hiding something.
As their relationship deepens, secrets, jealousy and prejudice threaten the trust growing between them. Freya doesn't know why Ashley sometimes pulls away, or why his friends seem to know something she doesn't.
Then one terrifying night changes everything.
With her world shattered, rumours spreading and her future slipping away, Freya must confront fear, grief and a darkness she never imagined she would have to survive. And when the truth about Ashley finally emerges, she must decide whether what began between them was ever real-and whether love can survive betrayal.
Yet Where We Began is not ultimately a story about what happens to Freya.
It is about what Freya chooses to do next.
Supported by friendship, family and faith, Freya begins the difficult journey back to herself. And Ashley must confront his own choices if he is to become the person Freya believed him capable of being.
Against the historic streets of Wimborne Minster and the ancient Dorset landscape of Badbury Rings, Freya begins to reclaim her confidence, her creativity, her dreams and, ultimately, her own voice.
Because cerebral palsy was never the thing holding Freya back.
Nor was being different.
Where We Began is an emotional and uplifting coming-of-age story about first love and betrayal, disability and identity, trauma and recovery-and the extraordinary courage it takes to keep moving forward when everything seems lost.
Because sometimes the bravest thing you can do is refuse to let your story end where the pain begins.
For anyone who has ever been made to feel too different, too much or not enough-and is ready to believe they were never the problem.
Your beginning does not have to determine your ending.
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