Picky

Editor’s Choice — BookLife Reviews (Publishers Weekly)
and
Bardsy First Chapter winner

Zillah’s twenty-three and stuck. She’s stuck living with her quirky mother, stuck with a diet of ten toddler-approved foods, and stuck in a relationship with a man who thinks sharks are immortal. Zillah desperately wants to move out on her own, but first she needs to prove she’s brave enough and that her mom won’t self-destruct. Things change when she secretly listens to her neighbor’s exposure therapy and decides to DIY her own mental health. But her first therapy experiment accidentally injures her mom, and life gets even stranger when she befriends the neighbor she’s been spying on.

Zillah gets to see the power of leaning into fear up close. But she also topples her carefully constructed home life, questions the “facts” of her childhood, and risks her mother’s stability as long-buried truths start to unravel. Zillah must decide who she wants to be and what she’s willing to leave behind.

Tender, funny, and full of nervy optimism, PICKY celebrates the courage it takes to reject the meal you were handed and instead choose from the buffet.