FAR FAR AWAY

Longlisted for the 2014 Carnegie Medal
An Edgar Award Finalist 2014
Finalist for the National Book Award 2013
An Atlantic Wire Summer Book Guide YA Edition Pick, 2013
Amazon Best Books of 2013
Booklist Books for Youth Editors Choice: 2013
Summer 2013 Kids' Indie Next List "Selected Top Ten" Category
Sciba YA Book of the Year
Texas Tayshas Reading List Selection
Five Starred reviews

In a small town where nothing ever happens, everything is about to change. Jeremy Johnson Johnson's life has begun to feel like a cruel fairy tale. He hears voices - "strange whisperings"- so the citizens in the small town of Never Better treat him like an oddity and an outcast. His mother takes a bite of a cake so delicious it's rumored to be enchanted and runs away with another man. Jeremy's heartsick father goes into his room and stays there unhappily ever after. Then the town's coltish, copper-haired adventuress takes a bite of the enchanted cake and falls in love with the first person she sees: Jeremy. This would be a turn for the better anywhere but Never Better, where the Finder of Occasions - whose identity and evil intentions nobody knows - is watching and waiting, waiting and watching. . . . Award-winning author Tom McNeal has crafted an enchanted and enchanting novel, a wholly original and addictive fairy tale that like the cake of Never Better will make you fall in love and take you far, far away.