Althea & Oliver

by Cristina Moracho

Overview

"The bittersweet romance, Oliver’s battle with his illness, and Althea’s coming-of-age struggle should appeal to fans of John Green and Sarah Dessen who are looking for something new." —VOYA

Althea Carter and Oliver McKinley have been best friends since they were six. Now, as their junior year of high school comes to a close, Althea has begun to want something more. Oliver simply wants life to go back to normal, but when he wakes up one morning with no memory of the past three weeks, he can’t deny any longer that something is seriously wrong with him. Then Althea makes the worst decision ever, and her relationship with Oliver is shattered. When he leaves town for a clinical study in New York, she drives up the coast after him, determined to make up for what she’s done.

Cristina Moracho’s extraordinary debut is an achingly real story about identity, illness, and love—and how one decision can change everything.

A TIME Magazine Top 10 YA of 2014 ~ An SLJ Best Books of the Year ~ A Booklist Editor's Choice 2014 ~ A Kirkus Reviews Best Books of 2014

"Fans of Rainbow Rowell's Eleanor and Park will enjoy debut author Cristina Moracho’s trip back to the 1990s in Althea and Oliver." —CNN.com

"A gut-wrenching tale." —People

• "Moracho’s coming-of-age story carries rare insight and a keen understanding of those verging on adulthood." —Booklist, starred review

• "Mesmerizing." —Kirkus Reviews, starred review

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780142424766
Publisher:	Penguin Young Readers Group
Publication date:	03/08/2016
Pages:	384
Sales rank:	263,793
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.20(h) x 1.20(d)
Lexile:	950L (what's this?)
Age Range:	14 Years

About the Author

This is Cristina Moracho's first novel. She lives in Brooklyn, New York and tweets at @cherielecrivain.

Read an Excerpt

“It wasn’t exactly how I pictured it, either,” Althea shouts back. Her legs are shaking. “How do you think I feel? Do you think that’s what I wanted?”
            “Then why did you do it?”
            Althea stares at him, knowing if he even has to ask, it’s already over, she’s already lost. “I don’t think I could have stopped it. And if you could remember, you would know what I mean, and you would know that I’m right.”
            Releasing her, he takes a step back, shaking his head. There’s gravel in his voice, a roughness she’s never heard before. “I’ll tell you what I know. This, you and me, this is all just geography. If it had been some other little girl who grew up down the block from me, I would have been her best friend for ten years, too, until I realized one day that I wasn’t sure I even liked her very much. You’re like an incumbent president that no one can stand but you get reelected anyway, you have the advantage because you’re already in and when someone’s in it’s so much harder to get them out.”

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

Praise for Althea and Oliver:
 
"The bittersweet romance, Oliver’s battle with his illness, and Althea’s coming-of-age struggle should appeal to fans of John Green and Sarah Dessen who are looking for something new." —VOYA
 
"Fans of Rainbow Rowell's Eleanor and Park will enjoy debut author Cristina Moracho’s trip back to the 1990s in Althea and Oliver." —CNN.com
 
"A gut-wrenching tale." —People
 
"Moracho’s coming-of-age story carries rare insight and a keen understanding of those verging on adulthood." —Booklist, starred review

"It is the exquisitely created and painfully real, pitch-perfect characters who make it so memorable." —SLJ, starred review

"At turns gritty and gooey, Oliver and Althea’s evolving relationship unfolds in a warts-and-all narration that alternates between the two, deftly capturing the purgatorial crossroads between youth and adulthood . . . Mesmerizing." —Kirkus Reviews, starred review

"Can boys and girls really be just friends? This endearing novel explores that, and a whole lot of other things including but not limited to: falling in love, punk rock, circa-’90s NYC, and a very complicated sleep disorder that causes those afflicted to fall asleep for days, weeks, even months at a time." —TeenVogue.com

"A gorgeous, glorious, unforgettable novel about punk rock, bad decisions, falling in love, and the messy beauty of growing up. Althea and Oliver is a flawlessly-crafted straight shot to the heart." —Sarah McCarry, author of All Our Pretty Songs
 
"I can't wait to tell people about this one. It's mind-blowingly good." —Molly Templeton, WORD Books
 
"Even if the book weren’t eloquent and hilarious, it’d be a must-read for all children of the ’90s. But thankfully, it is, and if you’re smart, you’ll run out and grab a copy."  —Bustle

"Go buy this book! Read it now!" —Hello Giggles

A TIME Magazine Top 10 YA of 2014 
An SLJ Best Books of the Year
A Booklist Editor's Choice 2014
A Kirkus Reviews Best Books of 2014
One of TeenVogue.com’s Best YA Books You Should Read This Fall
One of CNN.com’s 40 New Titles to Feed Your YA Book Addiction

Editorial Reviews

Praise for Althea & Oliver:
 
"The bittersweet romance, Oliver’s battle with his illness, and Althea’s coming-of-age struggle should appeal to fans of John Green and Sarah Dessen who are looking for something new." —VOYA
 
"Fans of Rainbow Rowell's Eleanor and Park will enjoy debut author Cristina Moracho’s trip back to the 1990s in Althea and Oliver." —CNN.com
 
"A gut-wrenching tale." —People
 
"Moracho’s coming-of-age story carries rare insight and a keen understanding of those verging on adulthood." —Booklist, starred review

"It is the exquisitely created and painfully real, pitch-perfect characters who make it so memorable." —SLJ, starred review

"At turns gritty and gooey, Oliver and Althea’s evolving relationship unfolds in a warts-and-all narration that alternates between the two, deftly capturing the purgatorial crossroads between youth and adulthood . . . Mesmerizing." —Kirkus Reviews, starred review

"Can boys and girls really be just friends? This endearing novel explores that, and a whole lot of other things including but not limited to: falling in love, punk rock, circa-’90s NYC, and a very complicated sleep disorder that causes those afflicted to fall asleep for days, weeks, even months at a time." —TeenVogue.com

"A gorgeous, glorious, unforgettable novel about punk rock, bad decisions, falling in love, and the messy beauty of growing up. Althea and Oliver is a flawlessly-crafted straight shot to the heart." —Sarah McCarry, author of All Our Pretty Songs
 
"Marrying dazzling prose and sharp-eyed realism, Althea & Oliver is a gritty, sparkling triumph. It's everything a novel is meant to be." —Bennett Madison, author of September Girls

"With beautiful language and wrenching, complicated relationship dynamics, Althea & Oliver captures the painful state of longing that is adolescence perfectly." —Corey Ann Haydu, author of OCD Love Story

It's very rare to come across either a book or two young protagonists as appealing and insightful as Althea & Oliver. Big-hearted and wiseassed and penetratingly smart, they experience growing up as a time machine that's whisked them into a future they don't want, even as they're dying to know what's out there." —Jim Shepard, author of Project X and You Think That's Bad

"I can't wait to tell people about this one. It's mind-blowingly good." —Molly Templeton, WORD Books
 
"Even if the book weren’t eloquent and hilarious, it’d be a must-read for all children of the ’90s. But thankfully, it is, and if you’re smart, you’ll run out and grab a copy."  —Bustle

"Go buy this book! Read it now!" —Hello Giggles

A TIME Magazine Top 10 YA of 2014 
An SLJ Best Books of the Year
A Booklist Editor's Choice 2014
A Kirkus Reviews Best Books of 2014
One of TeenVogue.com’s Best YA Books You Should Read This Fall
One of CNN.com’s 40 New Titles to Feed Your YA Book Addiction

From the Publisher

09/01/2014
Debut author Moracho takes a familiar setup—best friends with incompatible feelings—and examines it thoroughly and deeply. Althea and Oliver have been inseparable since they were kids. As they mature, Althea yearns for something more from their relationship while Oliver wants everything “to be normal.” Complicating matters, Oliver suffers from an onset of Kleine-Levin syndrome, a rare illness characterized by extreme periods of sleep, memory lapses, and erratic behavior. During one of Oliver’s episodes, he and Althea have sex, drawing a wedge in their friendship and causing her to act out violently. In what reads like a marked departure from the first half of the book, which is set in smalltown North Carolina, latter sections find Oliver in New York City, enrolled in a sleep study. Meanwhile, Althea attempts to track Oliver down but finds new friends and a stronger, more independent version of herself. Throughout the book, Oliver’s reserve is an effective counterpoint to Althea’s reckless responses to the teens’ respective predicaments. Moracho wisely resists a storybook ending for these two, concluding with what seems like the next logical step in their lives. Ages 14–up. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly

Althea and Oliver have been inseparable best friends since they were six. Now, things are changing. Something is wrong, really wrong, with Oliver, and Althea is starting to realize that she wants more from him than just friendship. As a rare disease finally separates them, will either be able to be who they are without the other? Moracho’s debut novel is chock-full of tropes (boy/girl best friends; prep school kids behaving badly; mystery disease that provides convenient plot twists; the romanticized New York City that only exists in fiction and memories; a mid-nineties setting so cell phones will not cripple the plot; absent and/or useless parents), any one of which might have been enough to tank the story. Despite these conventions, the novel works, due in large part to Moracho’s engaging and genuine narrative voice. Althea, complex and confused, is the center of the story, a young woman who is not as bad as she thinks she is or tries to be. Oliver, whose disease (the real Kleine-Levin Syndrome) makes him sleep for weeks or months at a time, is, accordingly, absent for chunks of the story and, although he starts out as a fully fleshed-out character, becomes less so as the book progresses. The bittersweet romance, Oliver’s battle with his illness, and Althea’s coming-of-age struggle should appeal to fans of John Green and Sarah Dessen who are looking for something new. Reviewer: Vikki Terrile; Ages 12 to 18.

VOYA, August 2014 (Vol. 37, No. 3) - Vikki Terrile

★ 06/01/2014
Gr 9 Up—This richly satisfying debut defies simple description. On its surface, it is about teenage best friends, a boy and a girl, who have complicated and messy feelings. Friends since they were six, the teens have grown up doors apart, both in single-parent families in Wilmington, North Carolina. What sets this novel apart is the way the youth are allowed to speak for themselves in all their chaotic, exciting complexity. Althea, who has anger issues, is in love with Oliver, which would be complicated enough even if Oliver didn't seem to be a modern-day Rip Van Winkle, falling into a strange, deep sleep at random moments and not waking up for weeks or months. Oliver's mom, Nicky, finds a doctor in her home city of New York who is conducting a study of this disorder, called Kleine-Levin Syndrome, and Oliver grudgingly agrees to participate. While he navigates the strange world of a hospital ward filled with other teenage boys with KLS, Althea tells her dad that she's taking a road trip to visit her mom in New Mexico, but then heads to New York City to find Oliver. Instead, she falls in with a collective house of crusty punks in the Red Hook section of Brooklyn, who are perfectly described with deep familiarity instead of exotic detachment. Oliver's medical condition functions as both an interesting narrative quirk and a deeper metaphor, and the resolution is satisfyingly uncertain. The novel is set in the mid-1990s, which is vividly re-created with plenty of drinking, sex, and rock and roll, but it is the exquisitely created and painfully real, pitch-perfect characters who make it so memorable.—Kyle Lukoff, Corlears School, New York City

School Library Journal

★ 2014-08-06
This ain't no fairy tale: This raw coming-of-age novel captures the listless wanderings of teens at loose ends. Althea is always waiting for Oliver to wake up. Plagued by a mysterious affliction that renders him nearly comatose for weeks at a time, Oliver's increasingly unpredictable absences test his lifelong friendship with Althea at precisely the moment that the mounting sexual tension between them reaches the limits of plausible deniability. After a particularly intense bout causes him to sleep through the summer before their senior year, he wakes to find that life has gone on both with and without him, with startling consequences. At turns gritty and gooey, Oliver and Althea's evolving relationship unfolds in a warts-and-all narration that alternates between the two, deftly capturing the purgatorial crossroads between youth and adulthood. Moracho's descriptions are vivid and arresting—a potent cocktail of speed and Southern Comfort "unbutton[s] [Althea's] diffidence like a blouse and cast[s] it aside" at a punk-rock concert—which both grounds the story in familiar details and filigrees it with poetic flourishes. There is rich potential for crossover appeal here; while Althea and Oliver's fumbling progress toward maturity will resonate with teens currently in the angst-filled trenches, the characters' worldly-wise perspectives on their own histrionics will give adult readers reason to nod and sigh in appreciative recognition: Growing up is a messy business.Mesmerizing. (Fiction. 14 & up)

Kirkus Reviews