Grades 8+
224 pages
The Leaving Room has five rules, which must be followed at all costs.
Rule 1: Do not lie.
Rule 2: Only 1 Leaver and 1 Keeper in a Leaving Room at the same time.
Rule 3: Only children under the age of 17 are permitted in the Leaving Room.
Rule 4: Keepers should not review memories collected in the Leaving Room.
Rule 5: Keepers must do everything in their power to help Leavers leave, but Keepers must always remain—in the Leaving Room.
…And Gospel only breaks some of them.
Gospel is the Keeper of a Leaving Room, responsible for helping lost souls find their way to the next place. There must be a next place, because those lost souls must go somewhere. And there must be other Leaving Rooms, because the Leavers she tends to are solely children. Which means there must be other Keepers, though she has never met one.
She knows only the warm familiarity of her own Leaving Room: a small and cozy place where the seasons change, though time doesn’t exist here; where there’s a kitchen for her to make a warm drink and a sweet comforting treat for her Leavers, though they no longer need to eat; where jars of her Leavers' most important memories shimmer like marbles on Gospel’s shelves—forbidden glimpses of lives she secretly savors when she’s alone.
Alone. Not lonely, you see, because a Keeper is never lonely.
When music begins to seep through the inescapable walls of her Room, Gospel does her best to ignore it as she tends to her Leavers, sends them on their way, and patiently awaits the next. But then a doorway appears, and in walks Melodee: another Keeper. With another Leaving Room.
Melodee’s rules are different. She must perfect her violin symphony for her Leavers… and then she can Leave, herself.
Neither Gospel nor Melodee know why their Rooms have merged, nor what the consequences may be for breaking so many rules. But they do know they share some sort of connection, a strange familiarity between them that may be blossoming into something more.
It may be time for them to Leave.
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Every month the SCCLD Teen Librarians choose one book as a great read from the library's Teen collection. This is the list of the latest picks of the month.
