UN ÉTÉ POUR RESPIRER by Katie Idle published by Seuil Jeunesse!

It is a pleasure to announce that Katie Idle’s new YA coming-of-age novel, UN ÉTÉ POUR RESPIRER (A SUMMER TO BREATHE), was published in France on 5 June by Seuil Jeunesse, where it has been selected as one of the publisher’s lead titles for the summer season.

The novel follows Adam, Tom, Kai (rhymes with hey, not hi) Hettie and Angie who have been best friends since they were 12. They’ve been through a lot together, over the years.  Adam’s friends tell him everything, he’s just got that sort of face, and he’s good at keeping secrets. But his biggest secret is his own; that he’s a carer for his 8-year-old sister Socks; that since the death of their mother their father is absent at best and violent at worst; that Adam has to protect Socks from him, from everyone, at all costs. Now everything he’s hiding is threatening to bubble to the surface and Adam is losing his grip on years of elaborate lies. 

The Beach House will fix all their problems, that’s what Kai says. They can all celebrate his birthday in style, relax after their exams, finally teach Socks to ride a bike. But as his friends get ready for one last summer of fun before they go to university, Adam is faced with a different reality, and he’s running out of excuses. 

We’ve got you keeping secrets for all of us, haven’t we?” She whispered, into the dusk.

Adam shrugged, as if to say, ‘maybe’.

“I just keep thinking,” Hettie’s forehead pressed against his. He could have counted each and every one of her freckles if he had wanted to. Adam realised he still had an arm around her shoulders. Her voice hummed in his ear beneath the sounds of the ocean wrapping around them. “Who’s looking after yours?”

Katie Idle is a writer and artist from Yorkshire, currently living in Cambridge with her partner and their slightly savage elderly cat, Flower. She studied classical civilisation at university, and is a graduate of the MA in Children’s Book Illustration at Cambridge School of Art. She works as an Assistant Editor in Classics at Cambridge University Press.