Shannon Takaoka’s debut novel Everything I Thought I Knew is a thoughtful exploration of identity, fate, and reality itself, will serve as a welcome escape for teens and young adults looking for a story with threads of mystery and romance – and a healthy side of surfing.
If you’re intrigued, read on to discover the synopsis and an excerpt from the first chapter!
Synopsis
Seventeen-year-old Chloe had a plan: work hard, get good grades, and attend a top-tier college. But after she collapses during cross-country practice and is told that she needs a new heart, all her careful preparations are laid to waste.
Eight months after her transplant, everything is different. Stuck in summer school with the underachievers, all she wants to do now is grab her surfboard and hit the waves—which is strange, because she wasn’t interested in surfing before her transplant. (It doesn’t hurt that her instructor, Kai, is seriously good-looking.)
And that’s not all that’s strange. There’s also the vivid recurring nightmare about crashing a motorcycle in a tunnel and memories of people and places she doesn’t recognize.
Is there something wrong with her head now, too, or is there another explanation for what she’s experiencing?
As she searches for answers, and as her attraction to Kai intensifies, what she learns will lead her to question everything she thought she knew—about life, death, love, identity, and the true nature of reality.
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Open in new tab EVERYTHING I THOUGHT I KNEW. Copyright © 2020 by Shannon Takoaka. Reproduced by permission of the publisher, Candlewick Press, Somerville, MA.
