Dreams make them different.
Bonds make them invincible.
You don’t need to be perfect to be extraordinary.

Legami’s first official novel: a fearless, rebellious adventure that breaks all the rules.

 

The NEXT are getting closer: four days in which all twelve-year-olds will be tested, tried and evaluated. The top twenty will earn the coveted Gold Star. Those who are not deemed worthy will get on a bus and disappear forever. Alice knows what’s at stake: this is her chance to become again the perfect daughter her mother Elena has always demanded, to blend in and slot herself into that dazzling world where everything – people, streets, even trees – has to grow straight, with no quirks.

But what do you do when the anomaly is you?
When you’re hiding a secret small enough to fit in a backpack, but big enough to shatter your whole world?

As she searches for this and other answers, Alice will stumble into Bruno, a gentle-hearted giant; Daniela, demanding and miss perfect; and Carlo, a walking generator of disasters, more or less real. Together, they will push into places no one has ventured for years, those hidden folds of the system that smell of freedom, where colours don’t ask permission, laughs aren’t synchronised and life doesn’t follow straight lines.

Perhaps it’s exactly there that Alice will realise that true safety doesn’t come from becoming perfect, but from finding someone with whom you can be imperfect, without fear.

pp.368