Step aside, because today on the site we have an utter icon, doing iconic things! Like publishing a beautiful romance between two neuroatypical nonbinary Mexican teens! Anna-Marie McLemore’s Lakelore releases March 8, 2022 from Feiwel & Friends! Here’s the story:

“Lovely and deep, colourful and creeping, perfect magic.”
—#1 New York Times best-selling author E. K. Johnston

In this young adult novel by award-winning author Anna-Marie McLemore, two non-binary teens are pulled into a magical world under a lake – but can they keep their worlds above water intact?

Everyone who lives near the lake knows the stories about the world underneath it, an ethereal landscape rumored to be half-air, half-water. But Bastián Silvano and Lore Garcia are the only ones who’ve been there. Bastián grew up both above the lake and in the otherworldly space beneath it. Lore’s only seen the world under the lake once, but that one encounter changed their life and their fate.

Then the lines between air and water begin to blur. The world under the lake drifts above the surface. If Bastián and Lore don’t want it bringing their secrets to the surface with it, they have to stop it, and to do that, they have to work together. There’s just one problem: Bastián and Lore haven’t spoken in seven years, and working together means trusting each other with the very things they’re trying to hide.

And here’s the beautiful, affirming cover, illustrated by Carolina Rodriguez Fuenmayor and designed by Liz Dresner!

Buy it: Bookshop | Amazon | IndieBound

Anna-Marie McLemore (they/them) grew up hearing la llorona in the Santa Ana winds, and now writes books as queer, Latinx, and nonbinary as they are. They are the author of The Weight of Feathers, a 2016 William C. Morris YA Debut Award Finalist; Stonewall Honor Book When the Moon Was Ours, which was longlisted for the National Book Award in Young People’s Literature; Wild Beauty, a Kirkus, School Library Journal, and Booklist best book of 2017; Blanca & Roja, a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice and one of TIME Magazine’s 100 Best Fantasy Novels of All Time; Dark and Deepest Red, a Winter 2020 Indie Next List title; The Mirror Season, a Junior Library Guild Selection; and the forthcoming Lakelore (March 8, 2022) and Self-Made Boys: A Great Gatsby Remix (Fall 2022). Find them online at annamariemclemore.com and on Twitter at @LaAnnaMarie.