Misconception — Ryan Boudinot

Former sweethearts revisit their teenage love -- and their conflicting memories of the past -- in this “gem of a first novel” (Charles Bock, author of Beautiful Children).
 
In between business in Iceland and home in Silicon Valley, Cedar Rivers has come to Albany, New York, to meet a woman he hasn't seen in twenty years. When he knew her, Kat was a cute proto-Goth with chipped black nail polish. Now she's a literary up-and-comer who has summoned him to vet her new memoir -- an account of the summer they were sweethearts. And she's written parts of it from his point of view.
 
Through an intense weekend in a snowed-in motel room, Cedar and Kat relive their most painful memories: Before they had a chance at first love, Kat was dragged off on a family sailing trip by her mother and her mother's new fiancé. Kat returned with a secret, one which -- when she shared it with Cedar -- set off a series of miscalculated assumptions that snowballed into a startlingly tragic incident.
 
A tender, absurd, and heartbreaking novel about the unintended consequences of first love and bad judgment, Misconception slyly questions the way we narrate our memories and assign culpability.