Equal parts heartbreaking, funny, and life-affirming, this is a story about love after the most profound loss, for fans of Jesse Andrews, Rainbow Rowell, and Jennifer Niven. "Required reading." --John Corey Whaley, winner of the Printz Award Seventeen-year-old Tess Fowler has dropped out of high school, tossed her laptop in a freezing lake, then jumped in after it fully clothed. Why? Because Jonah was the boy she knew only through texts and emails but understood to his very core. Jonah was the only boy she’d told she loved and the only boy to say it back. And Jonah was the boy whose suicide she never saw coming.   Jonah’s death has sent Tess pinwheeling into grief and confusion. But even though he’s gone, Tess still writes to him. She wants answers to the yawning chasm of questions that’s become her life. At the same time, she’s trying to find solace in her father’s alternative funeral business. Who knew that arranging last rites for prized pets could be so life-affirming? But love, loss, and life are so much more complicated than Tess ever thought . . . especially after she receives a message that turns her already inside-out world totally upside down.   As funny as it is heartbreaking and completely unputdownable, Things I’m Seeing Without You shows us what it means to love someone, to lose someone, to wade through the beautiful/strange agony of the aftermath, and somehow love again. "Sometimes hilarious, always affecting." -- VOYA "Nails the messiness of grief." -- SLJ "Compelling . . . a draw for fans of Nicola Yoon." -- BCCB Gr 9 Up—Gutted by grief after losing Jonah, her Internet boyfriend, to suicide, Tess Fowler drops out of her boarding school, throws her laptop into a freezing cold lake, and then jumps in with all of her clothes on. Aimless and without other options, she ends up helping her absentee father with his struggling alternative funeral business. In the midst of this change, Tess is contacted by Jonah's college roommate Daniel, who reveals some unsettling information about Tess's relationship with Jonah. Tess and Daniel work through their grief while planning Jonah's funeral. In a different book, the setup might feel forced, but in this tender and hopeful YA debut, Tess's journey feels natural and earned. At its core, this novel is about a shared community of pain and recovery. Bognanni nails the messiness of grief in a way that is authentic to each protagonist's loss. The strength of the book lies in the evolution of the characters and their dealings with one another. These relationships grow tentatively and authentically—there are no cinematic declarations of love or tidy endings. The book will satisfy readers of realistic fiction with its dark humor, optimistic outcome, and thoughtful exploration of grief and family dynamics. VERDICT A first purchase for teen-serving libraries where realistic fiction is in high demand.—Susannah Goldstein, Bronx School for Law, Government, and Justice, NY "Required reading for anyone who’s ever loved or lost someone...but especially both." – John Corey Whaley , National Book Award finalist and winner of the Printz Award "Bognanni nails the messiness of grief...The book will satisfy readers of realistic fiction with its dark humor, optimistic outcome, and thoughtful exploration of grief and family dynamics."– School Library Journal "A compelling mix of romance and soul-searching, this will be a draw for fans of Nicola Yoon ."– Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books "An original, well-told story that ties together strands of love, loss, and coming of age. Readers will not want to put down this sometimes hilarious, always affecting novel ." – VOYA Peter Bognanni is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. His debut novel, The House of Tomorrow , won the LA Times award for first fiction and the ALA Alex Award and has been adapted into a feature film.  He teaches creative writing at Macalester College in Saint Paul, Minnesota. #1   The morning after I dropped out of high school, I woke up before dawn in my father’s empty house thinking about the slow death of the universe. It smelled like Old Spice and middle-aged sadness in the guest room, and this was probably at least part of the reason for my thoughts of total cosmic annihilation. The other part I blame on physics. The class I mean. Not the branch of science. It was one of the last subjects I tried to study before I made the decision to liberate myself from Quaker school, driving five hours through Iowa farm country to make my daring escape. I did the drive without stopping, listening to religious radio fade in and out of classic rock, which sounded something like this: “ Our God is an awesome Godddddd and . . . Ooooh that smell. Can’t you smell that smell? The smell of death surrounds you!” All I could smell was fertilizer. And as the empty fields and pinwheeling wind turbines passed by my window, I tried not to think too hard about how I had let things get to this p