A Delinquent Dream

A dash of southern charm, a sprinkle of secrets, and a pinch of unrequited love sizzle in this contemporary coming of age story. Add a splash of tragedy, and emotions are stirred, sometimes to a boiling point.

If you enjoy mystery, drama, slice-of-life, or romance, this book has something for you!

Chloe Brown was born in a hospital parking lot, the last thing in the quaint small town of Little Elk, Texas her mother would ever see. This untimely death leaves Chloe to be raised in a multi-generational home with Mina, a sister who, by all accounts, wishes she'd never been conceived, a dad who disconnects from both girls yet manages to be suffocatingly overprotective of Chloe, and Gran, a hyper-religious (but sometimes hypocritical) widow who stepped up to help out when her son shut down after the loss of his wife.

Largely cut off from the world outside of her small sphere of school, church, and her lonely and dysfunctional home, Chloe clings to her grandmother as her guiding light and anchor in the storm of life. Her dreams are molded by the fairy tales Gran reads to her, a scattered handful of old photographs of the happy family Chloe feels a deep sense of responsibility for destroying, and an overwhelming desire to have a loving family of her own.

When Chloe sees her always snippy and rebellious older sister transform into a happy, beautiful bride and Gran, always critical of Mina, suddenly doting over her, it's the final ingredient in a recipe young Chloe has been cooking up in her mind for a while, and an unrelenting quest to find her own "the one" in set in motion, age appropriateness be damned.

Equal parts precocious and naïve with a tendency to teeter-totter between flights of fancy and self-critical overthinking, Chloe's path to finding the love of her life is a rocky one, and along with the typical challenges of transitioning from adolescence through puberty and into young adulthood, she faces an extra helping or two of disappointment, deception, and manipulation.

Fortunately, along her path, she also finds good books to escape into and roller coasters to remind her that every down is followed by an up. And she has her BFF by her side every step of the way -- to dream with her, and to reality check her when it all gets to be too much: like when Chloe walks in on a shocking scene that shatters all of her illusions of a happily-ever-after in a single heartbeat.

Divorce is hard no matter the circumstance; it's even harder for someone like Chloe, raised to fear God and cherish the sanctity of marriage. It feels like a downright soul-crushing failure to have to say, "I don't" to a man she still loves just as much as she did on the amazing day when she said, "I do" and thought her dream had come true.

Unfortunately, dreams can be delinquent, and Chloe finds herself picking up the jagged pieces of the life she'd always dreamed of before she's even old enough to pick up a guy in a bar. Finding a way to forgive herself and those who broke her spirit may feel impossible to her in these moments of heartbreak, but with the help of her amazing best friend, Tilly, a (hopefully) forgiving God, a good therapist, and a random encounter with an unexpectedly insightful acquaintance in a drugstore parking lot along with the discovery of a cache of untapped resilience she wasn't sure she had, perhaps self-acceptance and second chances are not out of reach.