The Girl in the Well Is Me

When you move somewhere new, you get to be someone new. I was ready.

Sixth-grader Kammie Summers’s plan to be one of the popular girls at school hasn’t gone the way she hoped. She’s fallen into a well during a (fake) initiation into the Girls’ club. Now she’s trapped in the dark, counting the hours, hoping to be rescued. (The Girls have gone for help, haven’t they?)

As the hours go by, Kammie’s real-life trouble mixes with memories of the best and worst moments of her life so far, including the awful reasons her family moved to this new town in the first place. And as she begins to feel hungry and thirsty and dizzy, Kammie discovers she does have visitors, including a French-speaking coyote and goats that just might be zombies. But they can’t get her out of the well. (Those Girls are coming back, aren’t they?)

“Moving, suspenseful, and impossible to put down.” —Kirkus Reviews, starred review

“Darkly humorous . . . Honest and forthcoming.” —The New York Times Book Review

“I dare you to pick up this riveting novel without reading straight through to its heart-stopping conclusion.” —Katherine Applegate, Newbery Medal–winning author of The One and Only Ivan

Karen Rivers’s books have been nominated for a wide range of literary awards and have been published in multiple languages. When she’s not writing, reading, or teaching other people how to write, she can usu­ally be found hiking and taking photos in the forest that flourishes behind her tiny old house in Victoria, British Columbia, where she lives with her two kids, three dogs, and three birds. Find her online at karenrivers.com and on Twitter: @karenrivers.