about the book
That’s it. NO MORE BOYS! After a caustic breakup with a college brat, high school junior Shana Wilde issues a “Boy Moratorium.” A troubled rich kid, Shana has left a long trail of broken hearts, but this is the first time she is the one dumped! Instead of getting back into the usual dating and drama, Shana focuses on her photography. While searching for the perfect Seattle shot to finish her college entrance portfolio, she keeps the boys at bay.
But just when she thinks her life is problem-free, she gets slammed twice. Her lens catches Quattro, the most unusual boy at Pike Place Market. The minute they lay eyes on each other, sparks fly! Neither is looking for a relationship, but they have found each other none the less. Unwilling to have another throw-away crush, Shana sends him packing with one of her rude quips.
As if that isn’t bad enough, Shana’s father announces he has retinal neuropathy and will be blind within six months.
Neither of her parents are handling the situation well. To help them cope, Shana suggests a dream photo safari to Peru’s lost city of Machu Picchu. Her father is an amateur photographer, and this will be his last chance to catch that once-in-a-lifetime photo.
But the trip is not what Shana anticipated. To her surprise, Quattro is also heading to Machu Picchu with another tour group. They keep bumping into one another, and their relationship is more than a bit prickly. Her parents are still at odds, their travel group is quirky, their trek is over hard and challenging terrain to the excavated site, and the jungle is fraught with peril. Everyone is hot, dirty, and exhausted.
But the journey has unexpected results for Shana. While coping with everything else, she discovers her—that indefinable something that is absolutely essential for a good life!
about the author
Making snow forts and reading voraciously, Justina Chen Headley lived with her Taiwanese immigrant parents, two older brothers and a younger sister in Buffalo, New York. They were all excited when her dad accepted a job in the sunny Bay Area of California. In high school, she joined the debate team where she was thrilled to learn she could win trophies for arguing!
Justina went to Stanford and then worked in Seattle and Sydney, Australia, editing and publishing magazines for Microsoft. She enjoyed holding baby koalas and swimming with the dolphins while she was in Australia, but didn’t like the palm-sized spiders! She was also a speech writer for the president of the United States!
Returning to her first love—writing—she now lives in Seattle with her family. When not writing, she reads, runs, and practices yoga. A bad day is when life interferes with her writing. She starts each writing day by journaling for a couple of minutes. She uses a pen and paper and writes for three or four hours. She feels that a blank page of paper is a portal into another world.
Sources:
Author website
Author interview: Into the Wardrobe
Also By Justina Chen Headley:
Return to Me. Little Brown Books for Young Readers. 2013.
Girl Overboard. Little Brown Company. 2009.
Nothing But the Truth (and a Few White Lies). Little Brown Company. 2007.
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