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Hot Key Books has landed Silver, a “genre-defying” YA novel about what it means to belong and to be human, from Olivia Levez.
UK and Commonwealth English language rights were acquired by Ella Whiddett, commissioning editor, from Clare Wallace at Darley Anderson Children’s Agency. The novel will be published in November 2024.
“Agenting this title has been both heart-breaking and a career highlight,” said Wallace. “We didn’t place it on our first try and yet I could not let it go, and felt it had something so beautiful and important to say about what it is to be human. Thankfully, Ella and Hot Key did too, and here we are, four years later!”
The synopsis for Silver reads: “Silver has been trained since birth for her mission: collecting data on the humans to test if Earth is viable for her home ship, Charybdis, to colonise. At all times she must follow the Mantra: To touch is agony. To feel is pain. But when Silver inhabits the body of a young woman, she isn’t prepared for how the humans will get under her skin. And she definitely isn’t prepared for Finch, the boy she starts to fall for. Especially when he touches her – and it doesn’t hurt. Conflicted by the war between her growing feelings and her allegiance to her ship, Silver must decide who to stand by and who to betray.”
Levez said: “Silver is a book close to my heart. I rewrote a lot of it during lockdown when we were literally ’out of touch’, so it’s a story about the power of human contact, connection and love...Silver had been put to one side for a number of years, so to hear from Ella that she still remembered my story about an alien girl in love was very special – an out-of-this-world experience!”
Whiddett added: “I first read Silver a long time ago and it has stuck with me ever since. Put simply, it’s a boy-meets-girl story, except of course it’s so much more than that, not least because the girl in question is an alien! So put less simply, it’s a stunning and nuanced exploration of life, love and the universe. Olivia’s writing quite literally takes my breath away every time I return to it. In Silver she has created a truly one-of-a-kind voice, and, through her relationship with Finch, a cosmic love story for the ages.”