The Year We Became More - Amber Irene

Senior year is meant to mark a beginning.

For Addie, it has always felt like something to get through. Born with a cleft lip, Addie has spent years navigating the quiet aftermath of being seen too closely and understood too little. Though the surgeries are long behind her, the self consciousness remains, shaping how she moves through the world. Staying on the edges feels safer than risking another moment under the spotlight.

Jackson arrives at the same crossroads carrying a different kind of damage. The loss of a parent at a young age has left him grappling with grief, anxiety, and a growing dependence he cannot quite outrun. As expectations mount and the future presses in, his private battles deepen, complicated by addiction and the isolating experience of withdrawal.

When their lives intersect, it is not dramatic or tidy, but it is consequential. What unfolds is a gradual reckoning, two teenagers confronting the stories they tell themselves in order to survive, and the cost of keeping those stories hidden.

A sharply observed coming of age novel, this book explores cleft lip representation, men's mental health, addiction, trauma, suicide, parental loss, and the unease of standing on the threshold between adolescence and adulthood. It is an intimate portrait of vulnerability, resilience, and the quiet ways connection can alter the course of a life without promising easy answers.