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From The Fall of Whit Rivera to Fats Probability, Charlie Vega, we love award-winning YA writer Crystal Maldonado’s explicit model of romance, with its delicate and heartfelt storylines, fats positivity, humor, Latine identities, and neurodivergent and queer characters. And the most recent by Ms. Maldonado? Oh, she eats.
Get Actual, Chloe Torres is out subsequent summer time (5/13/2025) and facilities round a matted buddy group. Chloe Torres’s buddy group, to be particular, which was torn asunder by messy romantic emotions and relationship geometry (i.e., a love triangle). Factor is, Chloe is about to go off to artwork faculty and desires her final summer time earlier than school to contain reuniting with former besties Romona and Sienna. So, she plans a highway journey stuffed with bucket-list gadgets neither lady can refuse, which is able to culminate in them seeing their favourite boy band’s reunion present. However being in a automotive stuffed with sapphic pining can get actual messy actual quick.
Take a look at the beautiful cowl for Get Actual, Chloe Torres (cowl illustration by Saniyyah Zahid and jacket design by Chelsea Hunter) under, and hold scrolling for an excerpt from Chapter 1, then slightly tea on the ebook, the duvet, and the inspiration from Maldonado herself.
Get Actual, Chloe Torres by Crystal Maldonado (Vacation Home, for ages 14 and up, on sale 5/13/2025); Cowl picture courtesy of Vacation Home Publishing, Inc.
Chapter One
I’ve had quite a lot of humiliating issues occur to me in my virtually eighteen years on this planet.
After I was eight, my dad insisted on holding my hand as he walked me into class on my first day of third grade. For the whole yr, everybody known as me Child Chloe.
In center faculty, I actually fainted when my trainer pulled out the frogs we have been alleged to dissect in school. Legend has it I even hit my head on a stool on the way in which to the ground. Cool.
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And as soon as ( . . . just lately) I went right into a Lush magnificence retailer with my cousin-bestie, Diego, and thought the froth bubble tub sampler that they had was edible, so I totally took a chunk in entrance of the gross sales affiliate.
However there has but to be humiliation like the kind I’m affected by immediately.
As a result of immediately, on this humid summer time day, I’m sweating buckets in a wig and poofy, plum-colored ball robe.
I’m dressed as a fairy-tale princess.
In entrance of my longtime crush.
And her complete household. As they rejoice her little cousin’s birthday.
Wepa!
It’s the precise reverse of how I wished to spend the weekend earlier than my very own birthday.
To be truthful, I’m getting paid to be right here—I’ve been working for the final yr at If the Shoe Suits, an organization that sends princesses to birthday events and company retreats—however that doesn’t tame the mortification I really feel. Not even slightly.
After I arrived and realized whose home it was, I briefly thought of working, heels and all. That might clearly be much less awkward than reuniting with Sienna and the whole Aguilar household because the employed assist, proper? I might name my boss and inform her I got here down with meals poisoning and I needed to bail, after which—
“Chloe?”
Sienna’s voice immediately froze my racing ideas.
It was as gentle and sort as I remembered, though we hadn’t spoken because the summer time earlier than freshman yr. Her inexperienced eyes gazed at me from beneath ginger curtain bangs, and I used to be despatched proper again to the swoony lady I used to be in center faculty.
Again then, it was me and Sienna and Ramona, and we have been inseparable.
A perpetual late bloomer, I admittedly didn’t have many pals after I began at Elmwood Center College. Fortunately, Ramona and I have been seated subsequent to one another in homeroom. I used to be immediately taken with how cool and mature she appeared, in her head-to-toe black garments and darkish purple lipstick. She had the form of corkscrew curls that might make any lady jealous—particularly me, who tended to have frizzy waves greater than anything. To outsiders, she may need regarded intimidating, and he or she completely was. However after I noticed an Intonation sticker on her pocket book, virtually hidden among the many sea of different band and political stickers, I knew I had an in.
Despite the fact that tacky pop bands didn’t look like the form of factor Ramona would love, she was drawn to any act of riot. Liking one thing mainstream as a woman who was something however was the very best form of contradiction to her. We turned quick pals, though we weren’t that alike. Although we each loved artwork and Intonation, if I used to be a vivid, sunny day, she was a storm cloud. But we labored. I beloved annoying her with my positivity, and he or she beloved rolling her eyes at me. We bonded rapidly over solely having one mum or dad, too—I had my dad, she had her mother.
It wasn’t lengthy earlier than we added Sienna into the combination. Center-school Sienna was all lengthy, lanky limbs and vivid purple hair, and he or she had what some may name an overt obsession with Intonation. As in, she couldn’t speak about a lot else besides the band. She even confirmed as much as faculty in the future in an Intonation shirt. When somebody made enjoyable of her, Ramona swooped in and claimed Sienna as ours, and that was that.
Intonation offered the much-needed gateway for the three of us to type actual, professional bonds. In between our obsession with the band, we had sleepovers and manicures, makeovers and film nights. We even daydreamed about having our personal lady group—who would sometime open for Intonation on tour, clearly—known as Lethal Flora. My girl-group alter ego was known as Oleander, Sienna was Hydrangea, and Ramona was Nightshade—and sure, we had choreographed dance strikes and a few our personal songs. It was foolish and it was the very best.
My dad would jokingly name us La Tripleta (after the Puerto Rican twist on a Cubano sandwich) as a result of he felt like we have been three elements of an entire. Typically it actually felt that approach. The place there was considered one of us, there have been the opposite two. We embraced it, sharing all the pieces from lipsticks to secrets and techniques to crushes.
It simply so occurred that my crush was Sienna.
I nonetheless keep in mind the second my coronary heart determined all it wished was to be hers. We went on a area journey to the native science museum, and, within the reward store, Sienna found a single teddy bear among the many sea of plushies whose ears had been sewn on backward. She felt so sorry for it that she purchased it and promised to present it dwelling without end—though a few of our classmates snickered seeing her, at twelve, carrying a bear onto the bus.
I, nonetheless, was completely smitten. How might I not be, when she was so openhearted and safe in herself?
I began considering of Sienna as this good being I used to be fortunate to be close to, which I do know now might be not very wholesome. However I couldn’t assist it. I wished to be along with her, sure, however I wished to be near her extra, so I saved my crush to myself and leaned into the pining, telling myself I used to be okay simply being pals. And I used to be. As a result of Sienna and Ramona have been my greatest pals. However…
From Crystal Maldonado:
The quilt was illustrated by the wildly proficient artist Nia / Peach Pod, and I’m in love with how she captured these three women: Chloe and her stunning, lavender hair on the middle, surrounded by her besties, Ramona, on the left, and Sienna, on the best. Nia created one thing that’s delicate, ethereal, and captures the essence of girlhood and friendship and maybe-more-than-friends emotions.
Picture courtesy of the writer
A unfastened retelling of the (iconic) 2002 movie, “Crossroads,” this ebook is a queer love story about girlhood, friendships, and the bittersweet expertise of rising up. I wished to discover the methods our pals can floor us, uplift us, and get us by something… together with, typically, all-encompassing crushes on one another.
“Grow Up, Chloe Torres” is for the fangirls — for these of us who’ve beloved issues with our complete hearts, who performed with Barbies slightly longer than our friends, who stepped into maturity with warning, and who felt nostalgic from the time we have been born.
Extra About Crystal Maldonado
Crystal Maldonado is a younger grownup writer with quite a lot of emotions. She is the writer of romcoms for fats, brown women, together with The Fall of Whit Rivera, which Individuals Journal known as a “pumpkin-spice-latte-flavored treat”; Fats Probability, Charlie Vega, which was a New England Ebook Award winner, a Cosmopolitan Greatest New Ebook, and a Kirkus Greatest YA Fiction of 2021; and No Filter and Different Lies, which was named a POPSUGAR and Seventeen Greatest New YA. Her center grade debut, Camp Sylvania: Moon Insanity—a mystical summer time camp story that includes two fats besties, co-written with #1 New York Instances bestselling writer Julie Murphy—releases in spring 2024.
From Get Actual, Chloe Torres by Crystal Maldonado. Used with the permission of the writer, Vacation Home.