Life and Other Complications

Readers' Favorite 2021 Silver Medalist

Seventeen-year-old Aly Bennett has been in love with her friend Luke for years. She hasn't told him how she feels for two reasons. 1) She's the girl with HIV. 2) She lied about how she got it.

Aly never meant to lie. The words just slipped out on her first day of a support group for kids living with life-threatening conditions. It was the day she met Luke and Caroline, who would become her best friends and the closest thing she has to a family. After so many years, Aly doesn't know how to tell her friends the truth. So she paints and she runs and she tries not to think about the future she can't have.

But when a Boston prosecutor asks Aly to testify in a trial-and her relationship with Luke intensifies-things become complicated. If she testifies, Luke and Caroline will learn the truth-that Aly has been lying to them for most of a decade. If she doesn't, a monster could go free, again.