A fantastic debut, that strides the line between adult and YA fiction, Rabbit Cake tells the story of 12-year-old Elvis Babbit, whose mother recently drowned while sleepwalking. Elvis loves facts and studies phenomena almost obsessively, yet when her school counselor convinces her she needs 18 months to properly grieve, she finds out all kinds of things she doesn’t know yet. How to keep her older sister who also sleepwalks from poisoning herself while sleep-eating or why her father has started wearing her mother’s silk robe around the house? And how did her mother, always a strong swimmer, manage to drown?

Hartnett manages to effortlessly capture Elvis’s voice, her bewilderment and her love for her family and friends in Freedom, Alabama. There’s something special about Elvis that makes the reader want to throw your arm over her shoulder and tell her everything’s going to be okay.