The you I've never known

Seventeen-year-old Ariel has spent her whole life moving from town to town with her father. He tells her home is wherever the two of them are together, and he decides when they leave. Now they are staying in Sonora, California for a full school year, the first time that has happened.

With time to stay put, Ariel makes real friends. She also starts to understand her own sexuality, and she is drawn to both a boy and a girl. Her father is volatile and homophobic, and his control over her tightens as she gets closer to other people.

The book is a young adult novel written in verse, and it alternates between two narrators. The second is Maya, a pregnant teenager who is running from an abusive home of her own. Her path crosses Ariel's in a way neither expects.

Then Ariel's mother, long estranged, reappears with a claim: she never abandoned her daughter. Ariel was taken by her father fourteen years earlier. Both girls have to face what is true about the families that raised them.

The verse is spare and the pages move quickly. It is a coming-of-age story about identity and self-acceptance, and it builds slowly toward a reveal about deception and a parent's control. Abuse and homophobia are part of the story.