The Incredible Kindness of Paper: A Novel - Hardcover

Skye, Evelyn

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1668081903 ISBN 13: 9781668081907

Publisher: Atria/Emily Bestler Books, 2025

Synopsis

“A sweet confection of a story, filled with heart.” —Nikki Erlick, New York Times bestselling author

Can one random act of kindness change the trajectory of a life? Serendipity has the power to fold two fates together and reunite a pair of lost loves in this enchanting novel from the New York Times bestselling author of the “tug-at-your-heartstrings winner” (Sarah Addison Allen, New York Times bestselling author) The Hundred Loves of Juliet.

Can one random act of kindness change the trajectory of a life?

In elementary school, Chloe Hanako Quinn is assigned Oliver Jones as her pen pal partner. Before sending her letter, she also whispers a note into it…and he hears her. Little does she know it would be the beginning of a friendship that would bloom into something more. That is, until disaster strikes, and Oliver and his family disappear without a trace.

Now over twenty years later, Chloe is a high school guidance counselor in New York City. But life in the Big Apple is not what she dreamed it would be as she faces a layoff, rising rent, a situationship, and loneliness. Desperate for encouragement, she gives herself a pep talk via uplifting messages written on yellow origami paper that she folds into roses. When one of the roses unexpectedly finds its way to a neighbor in need of cheering up, a desire to spread kindness and optimism is sparked in Chloe, who begins folding more roses and leaving them around town.

Across the city, Oliver has picked himself up from the rough circumstances that forced him to leave everything behind as a teenager—including Chloe. Now a successful financial analyst, Oliver’s past continues to haunt him. But when the city is suddenly inundated with yellow origami roses, a specific one finds its way into his hands and changes his life forever…

About this title

About the Author

Evelyn Skye is the New York Times bestselling author of several novels, including The Incredible Kindness of Paper and The Hundred Loves of Juliet. A graduate of Stanford University and Harvard Law School, her books have been published worldwide and translated into sixteen languages. Find out more at EvelynSkye.com.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

1. Chloe Chloe
The first time Chloe Hanako Quinn whispered into a piece of paper, she was just shy of seven years old. She had already drawn a picture—Mrs. Williams’s first-grade class was “writing” their introductory letters to their new pen pals—but Chloe wanted to tell her soon-to-be friend so much more than could be conveyed in a crayon self-portrait, which, to be honest, looked nothing like her.

For example, she wanted to tell her pen pal that on summer nights, she liked to crawl out her bedroom window on the second story and lie down on the little roof above the porch so that the crickets could sing to her until she was drowsy. That her favorite day of the year was when the college students returned to the University of Kansas campus in the autumn and, after they dropped off their suitcases, how they’d stream into her parents’ ice cream shop in the historic downtown and she could greet each one of their smiling faces as they walked in for their first cones of the school year.

Chloe wanted to know what holidays her pen pal celebrated, and she wanted to tell him how, every December, her relatives from Missouri and Iowa would all come and gather at her grandma’s house for “Kansas Gingerbread Christmas,” where the kids built sugar-gemmed villages, and then on New Year’s, they’d all wake up to mochi and “good luck” ozoni soup, celebrating the Japanese side of the family. She wanted to ask if her pen pal had a lot of relatives, too, and if, like her, he loved them so much, he didn’t even mind when aunts and uncles and older cousins patted him on the head and said, “My, haven’t you grown tall in the past year?”

But since Chloe couldn’t draw or write very well yet, she leaned over and whispered everything into her paper instead.

She told her pen pal about the black cat down the street who’d had orange kittens.

About the time she was walking home from the park in the rain, and a bolt of lightning came straight down toward her, but then suddenly veered off and hit the lightning rod at the top of the church across the street instead.

And even about the dam of twigs she’d built last weekend in the little creek next to her garage, which ended up flooding it.

But Chloe’s biggest secret was that she was lonely, and she wished she could have had someone with her when all those interesting things had happened to her.

“I hope we’ll be friends forever,” Chloe murmured into the paper. “Best friends.”

When she was done, she folded the paper, slid it into an envelope, and sealed it with a kiss, just like she’d seen in a movie.

Mrs. Williams sent the letters off the next day, and they traveled to another elementary school on the other side of Lawrence, Kansas. A boy named Oliver picked Chloe’s envelope, and when he opened it, he grinned before he even unfolded the paper, before he even saw her self-portrait. He didn’t need to.

Because Oliver could already hear everything Chloe wanted him to know.

Edition details

• Publisher: Atria/Emily Bestler Books
• Publication date: 2025
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1668081903
• ISBN 13: 9781668081907
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 256