SOMEWHERE IN BETWEEN

• Genre: Contemporary YA, LGBTQIA+

• Themes:

  • Being seen vs. staying invisible

  • Living with grief and guilt

  • Facing the truth vs. protecting yourself from it

  • Art as a lifeline and expression

  • Finding your identity vs. losing yourself

A reclusive teen artist, desperate to escape his insipid small town life, meets an equally troubled girl who helps him with a way out–until she becomes the reason his entire life implodes when she starts answering the questions he’s been trying to keep buried.

Seventeen year old Luke Graham has mastered the art of disappearing. For him, the world begins and ends at the edge of the cornfields that surround his middle of nowhere town, so its easy enough to keep his head down, his emotions buried, and his real life hidden within the splintered walls of the derailed boxcar in the woods where he pours everything he can’t say into the drawings no one is meant to see. Between an unpredictable father and the unanswered reasons for his mother’s sudden abandonment years earlier, Luke’s only plan is simple: survive high school, save money, and get out. Then Lorie Nelson crash lands into luke’s life and refuses to let him stay invisible. New to town and worn down by constant reinvention, Lorie pretends she’s fine, but in reality, she’s quickly unravelling beneath the surface. When they meet under unexpected circumstances after Lorie is publicly outed at school, their connection is immediate and undeniable, built on a shared understanding of what it means to be trapped inside your own life—and for both of them, Luke’s art becomes a lifeline, and possibly his way out. If only Luke were brave enough to share it. As their friendship evolves, Lorie inserts herself into Luke’s carefully controlled world—helping him transform the abandoned boxcar into a creative sanctuary—and, believing his art deserves an audience, convinces him to hold a one night only gallery that could earn Luke money to get a head start on his way out of Dalton for good. For the first time, Luke is planning his future, rather than just imagining it. But the closer he gets to leaving, the life Luke has been trying to outrun collides with the future he wants and the walls he’s built around him begin to collapse. What was meant to be the last perfect summer before graduation, becomes an unexpected reckoning–forcing Luke to confront what he’s willing to expose, who he’s willing to lose, and whether freedom is worth the fallout.

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