Today on the site I’m excited to be revealing the newest of longtime queer YA author Hannah Moskowitz! The Love Song of Ivy K. Harlowe is a contemporary f/f YA romance releasing from Entangled Teen on June 1, 2021, and you can learn more about it here:

Ivy K. Harlowe is a lot of things.

She’s my best friend.

She’s the center of attention.

She is, without fail, the hottest girl in the room. Anytime. Anyplace.

She has freckles and dimples and bright green eyes, and with someone else’s energy she’d be adorable. But there is nothing cute about Ivy. She is ice and hot metal and electricity.

She is the girl who every lesbian wants, but she has never been with the same person twice. She’s one-of-a-kind but also predictable, so I will always be Andie, her best friend, never Andie, her girlfriend.

Then she meets Dot, and Ivy does something even I would have never guessed—she sees Dot another day. And another. And another.

Now my world is slowly going up in smoke, and no matter what I do, the flames grow higher. She lit that match without knowing who or what it would burn.

Ivy K. Harlowe is a lot of things.

But falling in love wasn’t supposed to be one of them…unless it was with me.

And here’s the beautifully serene cover!

Cover illustration and design by Elizabeth Turner Stokes
Gold Marbling © VectorTwins/Shutterstock  

Preorder now: Bookshop | Amazon | B&N | Apple | Kobo | Google

But wait, there’s more! We’ve got an excerpt, so you can get your first glimpse of the girls!

I leave with Ivy and Dot, spilling out of the club and toward the lot two blocks away where I left my car. We’re up on College Hill, and the street’s covered with Brown and RISD kids standing in line for cheap pizza or stumbling back to their dorms. Dot’s a little slow in her high heels, and she lags behind Ivy, who snarks to me, “Do you really think I didn’t make sure she wanted to come?”

“Can’t be too careful.”

“I can rescue my own damsels, thanks. Or is this interrogation thing a new role you provide?”

“What, you mean along with my taxi service? And only if they look like they were born during the Obama administration.”

Ivy glares at me and slows down to take Dot’s hand.

They get in the backseat together and are all over each other before I’ve even started the car. Christ. I roll my eyes and adjust the rearview mirror so I don’t have to look at them. “Yeah, you’re welcome for the ride,” I mumble to myself, wondering, like I always do, why the hell I always agree to do this shit. God, I don’t even agree. I volunteer.

I weave us around the college kids, down the hill into the lights of the city, and south to good old Elmwood, the neighborhood where Ivy and I have lived since we were little kids, making pillow forts and mixing nail polish colors and teaching each other how to kiss. Or I guess she taught me.

I don’t really wonder why I volunteer for this shit. I just wish I did.

Elmwood’s one of the shittier parts of the city, and part of me expects Dot to try to back out when she sees where we’re headed; she wouldn’t be the first prospective girl of Ivy’s to do it, and she doesn’t exactly look streetwise. But she doesn’t care, or maybe just doesn’t notice, with her face and hands otherwise occupied, feeling up my best friend in my backseat, and there’s no protest as I turn onto Ivy’s block. And then immediately stop, because her street is crowded with police cars, firefighters, and a bunch of people gathered on the sidewalk.

“Ivy,” I say.

“Mmm,” she says, her hands on Dot’s waist, their lips together.

“Ivy.”

She pulls away and shoots daggers at me in the rearview mirror. “What?”

            “Your house is on fire.”

There’s a second where none of us move, and then all three of us scramble out, leaving the cars open and beeping in protest as we run down the rest of the block, weaving through the crowd until we’re on the sidewalk. The shit hole formerly known as Ivy’s house is smoking pathetically, one wall completely gone and the others not much better, bits of charred roof and furniture strewn into the front lawn. The firefighters are packing up their equipment, ready to go.

Oh my God. Holy shit.

Somehow what comes out of my mouth is, “How many fucking times did your landlord say he was going to fix the wiring.”

“Oh my God,” Dot says. “Was anyone in there?”

I shake my head. “Her mom’s in Costa Rica. Fuck, Ives. You could have been in there.”

Ivy’s staring at the house, her eyes slightly narrowed like she’s trying to figure it out.

“Holy shit,” Dot says. She puts her hand on Ivy’s arm. “I’m glad you’re okay.”

“She’s not okay,” I snap, because who the fuck is Dot to be here, to be part of this, to act like it really matters to her world whether this person she’s known for half an hour burned alive or not? “She could have died. If this had happened last night she would have been in there.”

“But I wasn’t,” Ivy says flatly.

“Still… God, all your shit. All your school stuff. Your clothes.” All the crafts we made when we were little, her half of the construction paper heart that says BEST FRIENDS FOREVER, though fuck if I’m about to say that in front of Dot. I take her hand. “Ivy…”

Ivy is still looking at her house like she’s making a decision, and I think about Dot’s face at the club when she was looking up at her. Two natural disasters in one night.

Ivy’s so fucking beautiful, in the streetlight and the smoke.

Her mouth quirks up into a smile. “Good,” she says quietly. “Good. Burn it all down.”

***

Hannah Moskowitz is the author of more than a dozen works for children and young adults, including Break, A History of Glitter and Blood, the 2013 Stonewall Honor Book Gone, Gone, Gone, and Sick Kids in Love. After a stint in New York, she’s happily back in Maryland.