IF YOU SHOULD DIE BEFORE I WAKE

"[An] effectively calibrated suspense story."

Publishers Weekly ABNA review - 2010

Sabrina Ryan wants to be an ordinary teenager - family, high school, maybe get a boyfriend.  Instead she has Devon.

Devon is the blood thirsty monster that terrorized her dreams - a demonic little boy responsible for killing their parents. When she woke from the coma, she tried to tell everyone. Instead no one believed her and she got a ticket to a mental hospital. When Devon murdered her favorite nurse, they threw away the key.

Now seventeen, this intelligent, artistic, borderline-paranoid-schizophrenic has been released from the hospital to live with her grandfather.  She’s determined to be “normal’ even if she doesn’t know what it means.  But ordinary things, like ordering off a menu and the mere act of conversation, prove more difficult than she expected.   Then there’s the speed in which a text message can ruin one’s life - in Sabrina’s case, one class period.

With no family - no friends - no sense of reality - and no cure for Devon, she decides she’s better off with no one.   Until she meets Riley, a captivating young bibliophile working for her grandfather, who knows more about her past than she’d like.  Overwhelmed when things heat up quickly, things cool down fast when she learns he has a secret that threatens to tear them apart.

Artistic achievements, horrifying clowns and lucid dreaming take Sabrina on a fantastic ride of Technicolor evil and embraces her determination to rise above it.  If she can figure it all out, she just might get the normal life she’s always wanted.