I'll Stay
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- $7.99
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- $7.99
Publisher Description
In this compelling, emotionally complex novel, a college friendship sparks a life-changing sacrifice that connects two women forever--even as it shatters their closeness . . .
“Let her go. I’ll stay.”
There are some decisions you can never unmake. You can only atone for them—or try to. During her senior year of college, Clare Michaels takes a spring break trip to Florida with three other girls, including her best friend, Lee. She’s hoping for adventure and a few stories to share back at school. Instead, a string of bad choices leads to a horrific encounter, and Lee offers herself up so that Clare can escape.
In the weeks and months that follow that fateful incident, Lee, once so dynamic and ambitious, flounders and withdraws. Clare was the only person to whom she’d ever confided about her troubled past. For Clare, that role felt like an honor—until it became a burden. Now she’s trying to make amends for her momentary selfishness by taking care of Lee—just as she’s been taking care of her high-strung mother, whose bestselling novel has been both windfall and curse. Years pass, circumstances change, and contact between Clare and Lee ebbs and flows, but the events of that night in Florida are impossible to escape. They keep dragging Clare back—forcing her to confront what really happened, and her part in it, in hopes of untangling guilt from loyalty and earning forgiveness at last . . .
“I'll Stay is a heart-pounding, addictive portrait of how one split-second choice can twist our whole lives—and how the patterns of our lives lead us to those choices. A smart, compassionate, psychological spellbinder of a book—with one of the scariest scenes you'll read anywhere that'll stay with you forever!”
--Jenna Blum, New York Times bestselling author of Those Who Save Us and The Stormchasers
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Children's author (A Million Miles from Boston) Day's excellent first foray into adult fiction chronicles three periods in the life of Clare Michaels, the aimless daughter of a famous writer. The first is her intense, college-years friendship with her best friend, Lee Sumner, which is irrevocably altered during a Daytona Beach trip when they are cornered by three men. Lee agrees she'll willingly stay if they let Clare go. Lee is later saved, but she won't discuss what happened to her, and as the years go by, Clare is haunted by the event. The second period covers the post-college years as Clare finishes her master's degree and Lee, once confident, falls aimlessly in and out of jobs. The third period involves Clare's mother, Eleanor, a self-involved writer. When confronted by a fan who claims that Eleanor stole her short story and turned it into Eleanor's most famous book, Clare, who has mixed feelings about her mother, begins to wonder whether this is the reason why her mother remains mum about her novel's origins. The novel is an intricate study of loyalty and guilt, providing full character arcs for both Clare and Lee, and it's a page-turner from beginning to end.