Anger is Only a Shadow: From the Carnegie-winning author of THE POET X

From New York Times bestselling and Carnegie Medal winning author Elizabeth Acevedo comes a huge-hearted, blistering journey to self-understanding and doing the right thing, whatever the cost

Seventeen-year-old Lil is anything but small. She's rebellious, she's loyal; she's figuring out what kind of good person she wants to be, or if she wants to be a good person at all. But more than anything? Lil wants to be free.
Because Lil is on probation. She's just out of juvenile detention, and is living a strange kind of new normal at home with her Mami, Papi and baby sister Omaris.

And she's trying really hard to be New Lil - follow the rules, keep her head down, take a breath and smile till her court hearing in three weeks' time. It's not easy with the ankle monitor, the curfews. The sideways glances she gets at school. The deafening silence from her beloved older brother Aldwin away at college. And Old Lil keeps rearing her head - the one that wants to go, run, find a way to open the pot lid to let the angry steam out.

And when Aldwin's silences turn to something more alarming - to talk of nightmares, of hearing voices, Lil knows that she is the only one who can help him. He was the one who picked her up when she was little, who checked for monsters under her bed. And now it's her turn to hold him together. But he's hundreds of miles away and a stark truth is staring Lil directly in the face: how can she get to him without putting her future freedom on the line?

Does doing the right thing mean losing everything?

• Publication date: 15 September 2026
• Page count: 336
• Dimensions: Height 129 mm; Width 198 mm; Thickness 24 mm
• Publisher: Hot Key Books
• Format: Paperback
• ISBN-13: 9781471409448