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Tess Callahan explores themes of love, loss and the scars life leaves on us in her painfully poignant novel April & Oliver. It is a lovely story. The characters are heart-rendingly believable as the pair struggle to find the seeds of who they once were and where exactly they went off the tracks. It's a tale of first love and the enormous depth of feeling left for someone who knows exactly from where each of your scars comes.

Think of it as a summer read with benefits.

The urgency of Callahan's narrative and its volatile juxtapositions--innocent passion and dark sexuality; duty and desire; first love and ruined love--make it impossible not to care deeply for these characters and their thwarted yearning and their heart-wrenching stories.

Grappling fates are the DNA of suspense, and Tess Callahan braids loss, longing, romance and violence into a tense, gratifying narrative. The characters in APRIL & OLIVER feel inexorable--either destined or doomed to be together. The need to discover which--and how--keeps the reader turning pages.