Finding You
Lydia Albano
Published by: Swoon Reads
Publication date: September 19th 2017
Genres: Contemporary, Young Adult
Taken from home and family, all they have is each other.
Isla is kidnapped from a train platform in broad daylight, and thrust into a nightmare when she is sold to a sadistic aristocrat. Locked in a dungeon with a dozen other girls, Isla’s only comfort is a locket and the memory of the boy she loves. But as days pass and more girls disappear, she realizes that help is not coming… If they’re going to survive, they’ll have to escape on their own.
Swoon Reads is proud to present Lydia Albano’s debut novel, a powerful story of a teen girl finding strength and hope in even the worst circumstances.
What is it about the Young Adult genre that appeals to you so much?
I could say “everything” and not be exaggerating. When you’re a teenager, there’s something to reading about people your age learn who they are, learn to be strong, learn to love, that shapes your own mind and makes you feel invincible. I know for a fact that books like The Goose Girl, Inkheart, and The Hunger Games changed my life. I was a reserved, awkward (I’m still awkward) teen living in the boonies of New Hampshire when I got swallowed up by the world of YA Lit. My brother, sister, and I nearly came to blows over who got to read Inkspell and then Inkdeath first from the library (I won because I’d started the series first of all of us, for the record). I remember trading Mockingjay back and forth with my sister, chapter-by-chapter because we were supposed to be doing school work but neither of us could bear to put the book down. I’m probably preaching to the choir though. We can all attest that books have such an incredible ability to shape us into the people we’ll become, and so that YA room in the library is where I really fell in love with stories.
So I guess YA was just the obvious direction my writing would take me. Even when I was first starting to write “books” (they were so small and so cute and so pathetic) as a twelve- or thirteen-year-old, my heroines were always somewhere around sixteen. I think I knew already that sixteen was an age where something could happen- where you could grab a hold of your circumstances and decide to change them. And now I think, as I’m a few years past my teens, it’s become increasingly evident to me that young adults need stories of hope and resilience. They need to see themselves on covers, they need to meet characters with their struggles, they need to know they’re not alone, not too broken, not inadequate.
I’m twenty-four years old and there’s nothing I like to read better than YA; I dare anyone to find a more encouraging, accepting, and honest genre out there.
If every teenager read a book that told them dragons can be slain, princesses can save themselves, families can be made whole, marching for a cause can make a difference, everyone has a voice that merits hearing- imagine what a strong and empowered and accepting generation could be built. Stories do that in a way that textbooks can’t, and to get to be a part of that, to add my words to the library shelves, has been something I only dreamed about for so long.
Thanks so much for letting me ramble about something I love so much. And thank you to anyone who reads Finding You for letting me be a part of that world for you.
Author Bio:
Lydia Albano is a (self-proclaimed) Bunburyist living in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where she promotes Oxford commas, spends her money on musical theater, and demands the Myers-Briggs letters of everyone she meets. Her debut novel, Finding You, will be released in September, 2017, with SwoonReads/Macmillan.
Thanks for hosting today, Suzy! :)
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