Harmonic Feedback

by Tara Kelly

Overview

Sixteen-year-old, music- and sound design-obsessed Drea doesn't have friends. She has, as she's often reminded, issues. Drea's mom and a rotating band of psychiatrists have settled on "a touch of Asperger's."

Having just moved to the latest in a string of new towns, Drea meets two other outsiders. And Naomi and Justin seem to actually like Drea. The three of them form a band after an impromptu, Portishead-comparison-worthy jam after school. Justin swiftly challenges not only Drea's preference for Poe over Black Lab but also her perceived inability to connect with another person. Justin, against all odds, may even like like Drea.

It's obvious that Drea can't hide behind her sound equipment anymore. But just when she's found not one but two true friends, can she stand to lose one of them?
Harmonic Feedback is a 2011 Bank Street - Best Children's Book of the Year.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781429936866
Publisher:	Holt, Henry & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	03/14/2025
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	287
File size:	442 KB
Age Range:	14 - 18 Years

About the Author

Tara Kelly is a one girl band, writer, filmmaker, video editor, and digital photographer. Harmonic Feedback is her first published book.

Editorial Reviews

Alternately heartwarming and heartbreaking, Harmonic Feedback is a book about acceptance, exclusion, joy, pain, love, loss, and finding your way in a world that makes no sense to you. In short, it is a very real view of what it means to be a teen today and a fine first novel for Tara Kelly.” —Ellen Hopkins, New York Times bestselling author of Tricks, Identical, Crank, and Glass

“A beautifully written novel.” —Elana, age 15

“This is a nuanced, sympathetic portrait that earns its hard-hitting climax.” —Kirkus Reviews

“Fans of Rachel Cohn and David Levithan's Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist (2006) will recognize similarities in the dialogue and romance between music insiders, but this title leads to a sobering, tragic ending that underscores the message that all teens, regardless of how they're wired, struggle to find connection, meaning, love, and purpose.” —Booklist

From the Publisher

After living with a series of her mother's boyfriends, Drea and her mother move in with Drea's stern, ill-tempered grandmother in tiny Bellingham, Wash. There Drea, who has never fit in because of her mild Asperger's, meets her first friends: moody, impulsive Naomi and seemingly wholesome Justin. The three form a band-Drea produces electronic music as a hobby-but tensions develop when Naomi becomes reckless with her drug use and Drea's involvement with Justin becomes physical as well as emotional. Complex and multifaceted characters give this story warmth, heart and maturity. Drea's diagnosis informs her experiences and behaviors but refreshingly does not define her character, which readers get to understand through her direct first-person narration. The drama ramps up to an explosive ending that in a weaker story might feel cheap and manipulative but here feels true; similarly, the resolution of tensions works because the author has brought her characters through a difficult and believable journey. Aside from one sudden sex scene that is too uncomplicatedly joyous to be credible, this is a nuanced, sympathetic portrait that earns its hard-hitting climax. (Fiction. 14 & up)

Kirkus Reviews