Cross My Heart and Never Lie by Nora Dåsnes

In this fresh, sensitive, diary-style graphic novel, 12-year-old Tuva’s questions about becoming a teenager are confusing—so when her first crush turns out to be on another girl, it feels absolutely wonderful—so why does it become so complicated?

Perfect for fans of The Girl from the Sea by Molly Knox Ostertag, HeartStopper by Alice Oseman, and Jen Wang’s The Dressmaker and the Prince.

Tuva is starting seventh grade, and her checklist of goals includes: writing out a diary, getting a trendy look, building the best fort in the woods with her BFFs, and much more. But when she starts school, nothing is how she hoped it would be.

Seventh grade has split her friends into rival factions: TEAM LINNEA and the girls who fall in love and TEAM BAO and the girls who NEVER fall in love. Linnea has a BOYFRIEND, Bao hates everything related to love. Worst of all, Linnea and Bao expect Tuva to choose a side!

In this delighfully hand-lettered coming-of-age graphic diary, Tuva gets caught between feeling like a kid and wanting to know HOW to become a teenager. Then Miriam shows up and suddenly Tuva feels as if she’s met her soulmate. Can you fall in love with a girl, keep it from your friends, and survive? For Tuva, it may be possible, but it’s defintely not easy.

Series Overview: Cross My Heart and Never Lie is the first in Nora Dåsnes’s duology of award-winning graphic novels for a middle grade audience detailing in diary fomrat, a group of three Norwegian girls who are becoming young women—growing apart and back together as they learn more about themselves. The first book in the series featured Tuva, and the second, which translates to LET THE FORST LIVE will feature Tuva’s atheletic best friend, Bao—whose focus is her passion for the woods where the group of friends grew up playing—as well as Bao’s heroic efforts to save the trees she has come to consider her friends.

Nora Dåsnes was born in 1995, and is a Norwegian writer and illustrator. She did her BA in Illustration Animation at Kingston University outside London, graduating in 2017. Her first graphic novel, Cross My Heart and Never Lie, won the 2020 Pondus Prize. She has written two others, and one is a sequel to Cross My Heart.

Author Residence: Oslo, Norway