Brady Mason couldn’t care less about fashion. She likes what she knows: baseball, comfortable clothes, and pork roll with egg and cheese. When Brady’s friends notice that she looks strangely like fashion editor Elena Lavigne, they start the rumor that Brady is Elena’s long-lost daughter. They’ll make a few TikTok videos, get some fun buzz online about their similarities, and that will be the end of it.
But when a DNA test confirms that Brady is Elena’s long-lost daughter, she’s summoned to Manhattan to live with her. The only problem: Elena’s high-fashion life clashes with Brady’s tomboy antics, and Elena doesn’t know how to be a mother any more than Brady knows how to be a daughter. But the more time passes, the more Brady sees what they have in common, and she starts wondering…if she and Elena are both searching for a family, could the two of them be the right fit?
Today on the site I’m delighted to welcome Rebecca Bendheim, author of the upcoming lesbian Middle Grade When You’re Brave Enough, which releases April 7, 2026 from Viking Books for Young Readers! Here’s the story:
A heartfelt, gorgeously written debut middle grade novel about best friends, first crushes, and coming out—perfect for fans of Kyle Lukoff and Jake Maia Arlow.
Before she moved from Austin to Rhode Island, everybody knew Lacey as one half of an inseparable duo: Lacey-and-Grace, best friends since they were toddlers. Grace and her moms were practically family. But at school, being lumped together with overeager, worm-obsessed, crushes-on-everyone Grace meant Lacey never quite fit in—and that’s why at her new middle school, Lacey plans to reinvent herself. This time, she’s going to be cool. She’s going to be normal.
At first, everything seems to go as planned. Lacey makes new friends right away, she finds a rabbi to help her prepare for the bat mitzvah that got deprioritized by her parents in the chaos of the move, and she even gets cast in the lead role of the eighth-grade musical. Which is when things start to get stressful, because it turns out the students at her new school have a long-standing, unofficial tradition: No matter what the show is, in the final performance, the leads always kiss for real.
Lacey’s never kissed anyone before—she’s not even sure she’s ever had a crush. And in Bye, Bye, Birdie, there are a few different co-lead kiss possibilities for Lacey to choose from. There’s confident, cocky Andre. There’s sweet, friendly Jaden. And then there’s the other new girl at school: dryly funny, impossibly cool Violet.
But while her new friends and older sister create whiteboard wall charts and botched field trip schemes to help her decide, suddenly Lacey can’t stop thinking about Grace, who she was so sure she wanted to leave behind. When Grace comes back into her life, Lacey needs to decide if she’s brave enough to be who she really is, in front of the person who matters most.
And here’s the lovely cover, designed by Anabeth Bostrup and illustrated by Chantal Horeis!
Rebecca Bendheim is a middle school teacher, poet, and graduate of Vanderbilt and VCFA’s MFA program in writing for children and young adults, where she wrote her critical thesis on queer middle grade. She has performed her poetry on NPR, at Lambda Litfest, and as a member of Austin’s Typewriter Rodeo poetry troupe. Rebecca lives in Austin with her fianceé, a corgi-chihuahua mix puppy, and an orange cat and can be found on social media @RebeccaBendheim.
Bram Stoker Award-longlisted author of MY DARLING DREADFUL THING Johanna van Veen‘s SAINT, SINNER, SKULL, a sapphic folk horror novel with a fantastical twist following a nun and an orphaned peasant on their harrowing journey across a war-torn countryside to reunite the gilded skull of a saint to her body – but soon it becomes clear darker are forces at play, pitched as Robert Eggers’s VVitch meets THE SALT GROWS HEAVY, to Jenna Jankowski at Sourcebooks, in a good deal, in a three-book deal, by Kristina Perez at Perez Literary & Entertainment (world English).
Brady Mason couldn’t care less about fashion. She likes what she knows: baseball, comfortable clothes, and pork roll with egg and cheese. When Brady’s friends notice that she looks strangely like fashion editor Elena Lavigne, they start the rumor that Brady is Elena’s long-lost daughter. They’ll make a few TikTok videos, get some fun buzz online about their similarities, and that will be the end of it.
