IF YOU HAD ANSWERED INSTEAD is a crossover YA/NA Contemporary Romance with a supernatural twist, exploring grief, resilience, and the transformative power of love. Like Dustin Thao’s You’ve Reached Sam, it asks what might happen if one last connection to a loved one could bend the laws of reality. Fans of Jenny Han’s The Summer I Turned Pretty will be drawn to the tension of a delicate love triangle and the bittersweet ache of first love, while readers of Ashley Schumacher’s Amelia Unabridged will resonate with the story’s lyrical exploration of falling in love while navigating grief.

When eighteen-year-old Jana loses her brother, a mysterious connection to his old phone leads her across the Atlantic for a year as an au pair, searching for a fresh start. But her new life in America unravels, and two very different brothers pull her in opposite directions—one steady, one reckless—forcing her to confront love, loss, and the edge of the otherworldly.

This novel is own voices and drawn from the author’s lived experience. After her brother’s death, Jean-Maré came to America to work as an au pair and was placed in a deeply flawed program. In the midst of that darkness, she met the love of her life, who supported her while she was alone in a foreign country. The emotional core of the story—grief, resilience, and love forged in impossible circumstances—stems directly from that journey.

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