Preview
  • Maybe We're Electric

  • By: Val Emmich
  • Narrated by: Stacy Gonzalez
  • Length: 6 hrs and 19 mins
  • 4.0 out of 5 stars (4 ratings)

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Maybe We're Electric

By: Val Emmich
Narrated by: Stacy Gonzalez
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Publisher's summary

From Val Emmich, the best-selling author of Dear Evan Hansen: The Novel, comes a deeply affecting story of two teens who find themselves thrown together overnight during a snowstorm and discover a surprising connection - perfect for fans of Nina LaCour, David Arnold, and Robin Benway.

Tegan Everly is quiet. Known around school simply as the girl with the hand, she's usually only her most outspoken self with her friend Neel, and right now, they're not exactly talking. When Tegan is ambushed by her mom with a truth she can't face, she flees home in a snowstorm, finding refuge at a forgotten local attraction - the tiny Thomas Edison museum.

She's not alone for long. In walks Mac Durant. Striking, magnetic, a gifted athlete, Mac Durant is the classmate adored by all. Tegan can't stand him. Even his name sounds fake. Except the Mac Durant she thinks she knows isn't the one before her now - this Mac is rattled and asking her for help.

Over one unforgettable night spent consuming antique records and corner-shop provisions, Tegan and Mac cast aside their public personas and family pressures long enough to forge an unexpectedly charged bond and - in the very spot in New Jersey that inspired Edison's boldest creations - totally reinvent themselves. But could Tegan's most shameful secret destroy what they've built?

Emotionally vivid and endlessly charming, Maybe We're Electric is an artfully woven meditation on how pain can connect us - we can carry it alone in darkness or share the burden and watch the world light up again.

©2021 Val Emmich (P)2021 Little, Brown Young Readers
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Dear Listener,

What inspired me to write this story?
"I love a good ghost story, and decided one day, pretty much on a whim, to write one myself—the kind of story I’d like to read on a dark night with a glass of brandy in hand and a fire in the hearth. But something else also apparated, ghostlike, in my mind. I decided this story would have an underlayment of historical fact, because history after all is what I do. Specifically, I wanted to use some of the spooky real-life people and events I discovered during my research for my nonfiction book Thunderstruck, which dealt in part with the Victorian era’s obsession with ghosts and the afterlife. What especially intrigued me was the deadly serious Society for Psychical Research, especially its Committee on Haunted Houses. I like to think of the result as a ghost story with footnotes. But don’t let that scare you; there’s plenty else that will. As a teenager, I was convinced that the image my peers had of me (popular, privileged, unburdened) was inaccurate and unfair, but I was unwilling and unable to show them how wrong they were. My family life was a mess and that was a well-kept secret. I was riddled with anxiety and resentment and that was a well-kept secret. As much as I claimed to loathe the perception of me, I went to great lengths to maintain it. I became a perfectionist, intolerant of my own flaws and those of others. I wanted to get closer to people, but I pushed them away; then I’d get upset when they didn’t chase after me. While this storm raged inside, I did my best to look unfazed on the outside. In Maybe We’re Electric, I created two characters—Tegan and Mac—who share this core need to be known (truly) and accepted (fully) and whose many contradictions conceal and distort those simple needs. They’ve endured a lot in their young lives and they’re ready to acknowledge this to at least one other person—and to themselves." –- Val Emmich, writer of Maybe We're Electric

Critic reviews

"A poignant, gemlike novel about grief, regret, and loneliness. Tegan's story is emotionally vivid, poetically crafted, and utterly moving." (Kathleen Glasgow, New York Times best-selling author of Girl in Pieces)

"Val Emmich's Maybe We're Electric is a beautifully rendered portrait of two complicated teens who find the secrets to unlocking their authentic selves through an unexpected connection. Written with tenderness and heart, this is a book that will light readers up." (Abdi Nazemian, author of Stonewall Honor book Like a Love Story)

"Emmich captures the excruciating self-consciousness and lacerating self-talk of adolescence, magnified and relentlessly scrutinized through social media.... An immersive, compassionate tale about coming of age in a single night." (Booklist)

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