Latest News

What Can't Wait made YALSA's 2012 Best Fiction for Young Adults list!

The release date for The Knife and the Butterfly is February 1. Can't wait? Order it here.

For insights, excerpts, and interviews, don't miss The Knife and the Butterfly blog tour.

Recent Reviews

This is what people are saying about The Knife and the Buttefly:

"An unflinching portrait with an ending that begs for another reading."

--Kirkus Reviews

"Ashley Hope Pérez... completely nails our students' experiences in her harrowing, heart-rending, and ultimately hopeful The Knife and the Butterfly."

--- Jordan Sonnenblick, best-selling YA author of Drums, Girls, and Dangerous Pie

"An uncompromising look at two characters most readers would otherwise look away from."

--Booklist

More reviews...

Welcome to the home page of Ashley Hope Pérez, author of two novels for teens, The Knife and the Butterfly (February 2012) and What Can't Wait (2011), both published by Carolrhoda Lab.

The Knife and the Butterfly

Azael knows jails, and something isn’t right about this lockup. No phone call. No lawyer. No news about his brother or his homies. If only he could remember...

Lexi Allen would love to forget the fight, would love for it to disappear back into the Xanax fog it came from. She knows that there’s more at stake in her trial than her life alone, though. Azael needs the truth. The knife cut, but somehow it also connected.

Want to know more? Follow the blog tour for daily reviews, excerpts, and insights from the author.

What Can't Wait book image

What Can't Wait

Seventeen-year-old Marisa Moreno has smarts and plenty of promise, but she’s marooned in a broken-down Houston neighborhood—and in a Mexican immigrant family where making ends meet matters more than making it to college.·Caught between the expectations of two different worlds and carrying a dark secret, Marisa will have to decide what can't wait. Kirkus Reviews described What Can't Wait as "Un magnifico debut." Read an excerpt here.

Latest Blog Post

Making the shy speak: Quiet characters

I have a problem: one of the main characters of my new novel-in-progress is shy, quiet, tongue-tied. She's also passionate, secretly sensual, and fiercely dedicated to what she cares about. But how do I get her to speak? What does it mean for narration when a character is quiet? Do I write in the third person? Or would that be like saying that, because she's shy, Naomi can't speak for herself?

You'd think I'd know what to do with Naomi since I am, myself, rather shy. It's something that few people realize because I tend to project a bubbly personality--probably an overcompensation. Teaching, too, has helped me to be able to turn "on" even when I'd rather go hide behind a filing cabinet. But as this website all about shyness (and famous people who were shy) says, "Shyness is not who we are, but something we feel while we do the things we do."

Okay, so Naomi doesn't = shyness. But I believe she is--unlike me--the kind of shy person that other people recognize as shy. For the boy who'll fall in love with her, that shyness is part of her mystique.

But what does the inner voice of a shy person sound like? If, for example, Naomi has trouble finding the words she needs to speak, does she nevertheless feel very strongly--inside--what she wants to say? How can I capture this contrast?

For my own confessions about overcoming shyness in the classroom, check out this post.

Tags: Writing Advice YA fiction New novel

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A Note from The Author

Writing both makes me crazy and keeps me sane. 90% of the time it feels like hard, hard work, but the other 10% of the time is so exciting I couldn't do without it. If you have comments about my writing or are interested in arranging an author visit to your school, library, or book club, please This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it . I love to hear from readers!

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Ashley Hope Pérez