One Last Chance to Live - by Francisco X Stork (Hardcover)

About the Book

Book Synopsis

What would you do if you had one last chance to live?

Nico has always believed in his dreams. Especially the dream he has of becoming a writer; it's the reason why he started taking a creative writing class his senior year of high school. But then Nico has a dream about his own funeral. A dream that feels too real to ignore.

In it, Rosario is beckoning to him. Rosario was Nico's neighbor, his best friend's girlfriend, and his inspiration. She was also the girl that Nico was in love with. And Rosario died last year.

Nico becomes obsessed with figuring out what Rosario was trying to say to him, and how she died. Surely if he can make sense of her death, he can find a way to prevent his own?

But at the same time, Nico's mom is sick, and his brother is falling down a bad path with a local gang. Nico knows it's on him to step up and take care of his family -- but how can he keep it together when, like Rosario, he sees how easy it might be to just let go of it all.

This searingly beautiful and hopeful novel is about the search for a life of meaning and creativity, while also accepting the flawed life that we're given. It's a love story between a teen boy and the girl who still haunts his dreams.

Review Quotes

Praise for One Last Chance to Live:

A Junior Library Guild Selection

★ "The slow burn of an eerie mystery yields more than clues. Stork pens a coming-of-age story especially attuned to finding healing through art." -- The Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books (starred review)

★ "[A] thoughtful, moving account of a life on the edge. Underlying all is the profound and believable hope that Nico will overcome his obstacles and be able to recognize his writing -- and his life -- for the precious gifts they are." -- Shelf Awareness (starred review)

★ "Stork delivers an impactful and ambitious work. It's unflinching regarding life's greater challenges -- but that grittiness is the strength of this engrossing and expertly realized tale." -- Booklist (starred review)

"A grieving teen from the Bronx turns a class journal into a lifeline in this high-stakes page-turner." --- Publishers Weekly

"Raw and real. Hard to put down." -- Kirkus Reviews

Praise for I Am Not Alone:

A Junior Library Guild Selection

★ "An affecting, deeply emotional story. An important book." -- Booklist (starred review)

★ "Alberto's suspected schizophrenia makes him heartbreakingly susceptible to both the best and worst of humanity. An illuminatingly powerful story about mental illness, young love, faith, and hope." -- Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

★ "This taut and suspensefully plotted emotional drama offers a nuanced, poignant story of friendship in the face of adversity." -- The Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books (starred review)

"The narrative's high-stakes conflicts are front and center, [but] it's the sheer sweetness of Alberto and Grace's love story that sets the tone of this hopeful read." -- Publishers Weekly

"An intricate hunt for truth through the maze of mental illness. Stork's resonating, empathic fiction once again provides audiences with convincing reasons to believe 'I am not alone.'" -- Shelf Awareness

About the Author

Francisco X. Stork (he/him) emigrated from Mexico at the age of nine with his mother and his adoptive father. I Am Not Alone is his tenth novel. Other novels include: Marcelo in the Real World, recipient of the Schneider Family Book Award, The Last Summer of the Death Warriors, which received the Elizabeth Walden Award, The Memory of Light, recipient of the Tomas Rivera Award, Disappeared, which received the Young Adult Award from the Texas Institute of Letters and was a Walter Dean Myers Award Honor Book and Illegal, recipient of the In the Margins Award, the Young Adult Award from the Texas Institute of Letters and the International Latino Book Award. On the Hook published in 2021, received four starred reviews and was the recipient of the International Latino Book Award.