Break To You

The last thing Adriana and Jon expect to find in the harsh juvenile detention center in which they are both imprisoned is love. But when they start to communicate through Adriana’s journal, left in the center's shared library, the unexpected happens. This fast-paced, highly compelling story exposes what life is like in detention—and reveals the hearts of two teens who are forced to live in desperate circumstances. A tour de force by multi–award-winning, bestselling author Neal Shusterman, along with Debra Young and Michelle Knowlden.

Adriana knows why she is in Compass juvenile detention center: her bad taste in “friends.” If she can manage to keep her head down for the next seven months, she might be able to get through her sentence. Thankfully, she’s allowed to keep her journal, where she writes down her most private thoughts and observations when the pressure inside her is too much.

Until the day she opens her journal and discovers that her thoughts are no longer so private. Someone has read her writings, and written back. A boy who lives on the other side of the gender-divided detention center. A boy who sparks a fire in her to write back.

Jon’s story is different than Adriana’s; he’s already been at Compass for years and will be in the system for years to come. Still, when he reads the words Adriana writes to him, it makes him feel like the walls that hold them in just melt away.

Bestselling author of Scythe Neal Shusterman with coauthors Debra Young and Michelle Knowlden together tell an intense yet tender story of two teens trapped in impossible circumstances and unjust systems, willing to risk everything for love—no matter what consequences their fates have in store. 

Neal Shusterman is the New York Times bestselling and award-winning author of more than fifty books, including Challenger Deep, which won the National Book Award; Scythe, a Michael L. Printz Honor Book; Dry, which he cowrote with his son, Jarrod Shusterman; Unwind, which won more than thirty domestic and international awards; Bruiser, which was on a dozen state lists; The Schwa Was Here, winner of the Boston Globe–Horn Book Award; and Game Changer, which debuted as an indie top-five best seller. He is the winner of the Margaret A. Edwards Award for the body of his work

Debra Young wrote fantasy, science fiction, and horror. She published stories in The Horror Zine, Dark Fire Fiction, Swords and Sorcery magazine, and Black Fox Literary Magazine and was the author of Grave Shadows, a story anthology. Sadly, she passed away due to complications from lupus in 2024.

Once a space shuttle engineer and extreme hiker, Michelle Knowlden now writes full-time. The Shamus Award nominee’s stories have appeared in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, Amazing Stories, Daily Science Fiction, and Neal Shusterman’s UnBound and Gleanings anthologies. Her books include the Abishag Mysteries quartet, the Deluded Detective series, the Faith Interrupted Cozy Mysteries, Her Last Mission, and the 1930s novella The Admiral of Signal Hill. Under the name Michelle Dutton, she wrote the fantasy series Ravenscar Shifters and the historical romance Lillian in the Doorway. She splits her time between riverboats and the Arizona highlands with family, friends, and an Icelandic sponge named Marino.