Things I Know About Love

Things I know about love.

1. People don’t always tell you the truth about how they feel.
2. Nothing that happens between two people is guaranteed to be private.
3. I don’t know if you ever get over having your heart broken.

Livia’s experience of love has been disappointing, to say the least. But all that is about to change. After years of illness, she’s off to spend the summer with her brother in America. She’s making up for lost time, and she’s writing it all down in her private blog.

America is everything she’d dreamed of – and then she meets Adam. Can Livia put the past behind her and risk falling in love again?

“Compelling, poignant and uplifting in themost unusual way, Kate’s writing is perfectly pitched.”
Claudia Mody, Bookseller

“Avoids sentimentality and bathos to deliver a rawly honest narrative rich in humour, exposing the stark realities of a first true love from teh point of view of both protagonists and genuinely moving the reader.”
Books for Keeps

“Compelling and compassionate . . . moving and gentle awareness of a real relationship”
Carousel

Rain

I remember Sarah. She was funny and happy and her voice went croaky when she was excited. I loved her more than anything. But she died before I ever really knew her: she was twenty-six. She was my mother.

Rain Lindsay is spending her first summer away from her father at her grandmother's large house in London.

London is scary and exciting – just like Harry, a student who is helping her grandmother renovate the house. Slowly their suspicion of each other lessens as Harry helps Rain discover more about her dead mother, whose teenage diary Rain finds in her old bedroom. A diary that reveals someunsettling secrets . . .

An utterly compelling story of a girl on the brink of love and adulthood.

'Sensitive and perceptive storytelling from an author worth watching.'
The Bookseller

'entertaining and accessible . . . heartwarming . . . Rain has all the components of a safe, happy-ever-after summer read, yet le Vann's sensitive, perceptive prose will make it more enduring.
Daily Telegraph

Two Friends, One Summer

So we’ve arrived at Vernon station, me and my best friend Rachel, and there’s two cars waiting for us. One is this gorgeous white open-top sports car, and leaning against it is a stunning older woman in sunglasses and a girl my age who might just have stepped out of a perfume ad, both of them smiling. The other car is this bashed-up Citroen painted two different shades of blue, with a short fat man glaring out of the window. The stunning woman strides forward with her arms out to both of us, and says (like there was ever any doubt about it), “Ra-shell?”

Best friends Samantha and Rachel are spending the holidays with two French families. They’re used to doing everything together, but now they’re heading in opposite directions. New experiences, new friends, new boys, new tensions…will their friendship survive this turbulent summer?

“Sensitive and perceptive storytelling from an author worth watching.”
The Bookseller

“Le Vann is good at depicting the pink-hued, glittery surface of having a good time but takes a step further to present the doubts, disappointments and reassessments which crowd in when just having a good time proves not to be enough.”
Books for Keeps

"Expertly written, you feel waves of emotion sweep over you finding the perfect mix of betrayal, jealousy, guilt and relief. Extremely enjoyable."
Teen Titles

“Sweet and insightful.”
Mizz

“A beautifully written and evocative story of young love and changing friendships.”
Writing Magazine

Tessa In Love

Wolfie was totally scruffy…and totally sexy. It wasn't love at first sight, because I'd been aware of him for years and just hadn't noticed before. It was like really seeing someone for the first time. Then he waved me over! I looked behind me to make sure he wasn't beckoning to somebody else.
     He laughed, and mouthed, 'Yes, you.'
     I pulled my skirt down as far as it would go and rubbed a bit of leaf over my trainers to make them seem beaten up, then made my way over - but on the way, I slightly forgot to how to walk. I was taking insanely big steps…'

Tessa has always been 'the quiet one', while her best friend, Matty, is outgoing and constantly has boys flocking around her. But when Tessa falls in love for the first time at sixteen, everything changes. Tessa finds a soulmate in Wolfie, a committed green activist, and she grows more confident and outspoken every day. She also begins to look at the world differently…

But just when their love is at its strongest, tragedy strikes. How will she ever be able to cope?

"Had be living with the characters, laughing with them, changing the world with them, and if I dare admit it, crying with them. A fabulous story I couldn't put it down."
WENDY COOLING, REVIEWER AND CHILDREN'S BOOK CONSULTANT

"The developing attraction between Wolfie and Tessa is handled with a rare grace and ranks as one of the finest evocations of young love I have read – subtle, delicate, and utterly moving. A fine piece of writing which will help, guide and absorb anyone who has experienced love and loss."
BOOKS FOR KIDS

Click here to read an extract from Tessa in Love

Click here for teen review