This Golden State
by Marit Weisenberg
High School    Flatiron    400 pp.  g
3/22    978-1-250-78627-2    $18.99
e-book ed.  978-1-250-78626-5    $10.99

Poppy, seventeen, and her younger sister, Emma, have grown up on the run. Their parents, though loving, are fugitives from justice who use fake identities to settle in small towns all around the country and never hesitate to pull up stakes and vanish. Her hypervigilant dad maintains that the less the girls know, the better. Poppy and Emma respect their parents’ wishes to stay off technology, and they don’t even know their parents’ real names. But in a beautiful California town, the vibe feels different (“For the first time in all my years running, something shifted”), and Poppy dares to wonder about her future, even convincing her father to arrange her enrollment in an advanced math class. She starts to spend time with classmate Harry, and with his help slowly pieces together her complicated backstory. Weisenberg delivers a compelling coming-of-age novel that explores personal responsibility and what we do for love and for family loyalty. Fans of crime stories, romances, and psychological thrillers will be fully invested.

From the May/June 2022 issue of The Horn Book Magazine.