You're listening to All the Backlist, a weekly show about books that are not new.

I'm Tears of Price coming to you from Book Riot, and this week I'm going to be diving

into the stacks to talk about two great novels in first, in honor of April being Poetry

Month.

But first, let's hear from our sponsor.

All right, so April is Poetry Month, and I do love reading poetry.

But lately I realized that I haven't read a lot of poetry in the last few months, and

that made me kind of sad, and then I got to thinking, and I was like, well, I have read

some really great novels in first.

So I'm going to be telling you about two great novels in first written by two really amazing

poets, and I hope that you pick them up, even if poetry is not your thing.

Because I think, you know, having a plot and having a narrative and characters can kind

of get people into poetry in a unique way.

So my first pick is Alone by Megan Freeman, and alone is technically a middle-grade novel.

But I think it really sort of walks that line between middle-grade and young adult,

in part because this book takes place over the course of a few years.

So the protagonist, Maddie, is 12 years old when the book starts, but she's 15 by the

time the book ends.

So Alone is about Maddie, who is, you know, just some normal middle schooler living in

Colorado at the start of her novel.

She has two parents who love her very much, but are divorced, amicably, and so she splits

her time between her dad and her mom's house.

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