Then Everything Happens at Once: An Empowering YA Novel About First Love, Body Acceptance, and Self-Discovery

From the Lambda Award–winning author of Girl Mans Up comes an empowering, sex-positive coming-of-age story about a teen exploring first love and desire as her rocky relationship with her own body and a pandemic threaten to sabotage everything. Perfect for fans of Fat Chance, Charlie Vega and Cool for the Summer.  Now in paperback!

Baylee has never been kissed but she wants to do way more than that. She’s had a huge crush on her gorgeous best friend and neighbor, Freddie, for years, but since she doesn’t look like his usual type, the judgmental voice in her head tells her he’ll never see her as more than a friend. It feels like she’ll spend the rest of high school fantasizing on the sidelines while everyone else dates and hooks up.

Then Baylee meets Alex online and she starts to fall for this sweet, funny barista who likes her just as she is. It’s new, electric, and all-consuming to be around Alex. But when Freddie makes a move on Baylee and a virus shuts the world down, Baylee finds herself torn.

Everything is happening at once, and she is left navigating the messy waters of love and desire. It helps that she’s observed her friends’ relationship drama so she knows exactly what mistakes not to make . . . right?

This sophomore novel from M-E Girard centers a fat, confident girl going after what she wants and learning to love herself along the way.

• A Classic Friends to Lovers Crush: Baylee has been pining for her best friend Freddie for years. When he finally makes a move, it’s everything she’s dreamed of—and more complicated than she ever imagined.
• An Unexpected Online Romance: Then there’s Alex, the sweet, funny barista she meets online who likes her exactly as she is. It’s new and electric, but who is the person on the other side of the screen?
• A Surprise Sapphic Romance: As Baylee navigates her feelings, she discovers that love and desire don’t always look the way you expect, leading to a journey of self-discovery and a sweet, surprising F/F romance.
• A Coming of Age During a Pandemic: Just as Baylee’s love life gets complicated, a virus shuts the whole world down, forcing her to navigate her messy, beautiful feelings in total lockdown.

M-E Girard’s debut, Girl Mans Up, won the Lambda Literary Award and was a finalist for the William C. Morris Award. She lives just outside of Toronto, Canada, where she splits her time between writing YA fiction, being a mom to a toddler, and working as a registered nurse. M-E dedicated the bulk of her nursing career to working with special-needs kids, and more recently she was an ER and ICU nurse during the first waves of the pandemic. A 2013 and 2015 Lambda Literary Fellow, M-E is a proud feminist who is endlessly fascinated with what it means to be a girl—especially a queer, fat girl. You can find her online at www.megirard.com.