This Side of Falling

In a devastatingly honest coming-of-age debut, a Chinese American teen navigates grief in the wake of her first love’s death by suicide.

Not real. The mantra seventeen-year-old Nina repeats to herself the morning after her almost-boyfriend, Ethan Travvers, jumped onto the tracks in front of a freight train. The two words that keep the truth just far enough away so the loss can’t touch her, grief can’t break her. After all, there is the family image to uphold, especially when her dad’s startu...