The Things We Miss

When You Reach Me meets Starfish in this contemporary middle grade about a misfit girl who finds a way to skip the hard parts of life.

J.P. Green is not enjoying seventh grade: a bully won't stop offering her diet advice, her mom acts embarrassed by her, and her Pop Pop’s lung cancer is back. So when she discovers a mysterious door in her neighbor’s treehouse, she doesn’t hesitate before walking through. The door sends her three days forward in time.

Suddenly, J.P. can skip all the worst parts of seventh grade: Fitness tests in P.E., oral book reports, awkward conversations with her mom . . . she can avoid them all and no one even knows she was gone.

But when J.P. starts skipping things she can’t miss, she must decide whether the highs in life are worth the lows and what it means to show up for the people you love—and for yourself—in this moving middle grade novel about mental health, body acceptance, and self-confidence.

Leah Stecher was born and raised in Southern California and—after spending nearly a decade in New York City—currently lives in coastal Maine. By day, she edits policy papers for an environmental nonprofit; by night, she writes middle grade fiction and eats lots of dessert.