The Astonishing Color of After
“[A] beautiful, magical journey into the heart of grief.”
Holly Black, New York Times bestselling author
A Kirkus Reviews Pick of 13 YA Books Both You & Your Teen Will Enjoy
A BuzzFeed Books Pick of YA Books Not to Miss
A School Library Journal Top Pick of YA Titles for Asian Pacific American HIstory Month or Any Time
A Publishers Weekly Pick of Books That Explore the Immigrant Experience
A New York Times pick of Summer YA Novels
A Paste Magazine Pick of Best YA Novels of 2018 (So Far)
A BookRiot Pick of 3 Excellent YA Novels about Grief
A Booklist Editors’ Choice of 2018's Top Audiobooks for Youth
A 2019 Walter Award Honors Book in the Teen Category
A YALSA Amazing Audiobooks Selection for Young Adults
Longlisted for the Carnegie Medal for Literature
Finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Young Adult Literature
Leigh Chen Sanders is absolutely certain about one thing: When her mother died by suicide, she turned into a bird.
Leigh, who is half Asian and half white, travels to Taiwan to meet her maternal grandparents for the first time. There, she is determined to find her mother, the bird. In her search, she winds up chasing after ghosts, uncovering family secrets, and forging a new relationship with her grandparents. And as she grieves, she must try to reconcile the fact that on the same day she kissed her best friend and longtime secret crush, Axel, her mother was taking her own life.
Alternating between real and magic, past and present, friendship and romance, hope and despair, The Astonishing Color of After is a stunning and heartbreaking novel about finding oneself through family history, art, grief, and love.
"Emily X.R. Pan's brilliantly crafted, harrowing first novel portrays the vast spectrum of love and grief with heart-wrenching beauty and candor. This is a very special book."--John Green, bestselling author of The Fault in Our Stars and Turtles All the Way Down
Praise