Exposure

One night. Two sides of a story. In multi-perspective storytelling filled with humanity and empathy, Exposure forces readers to reckon with conflicting truths that are not easily reduced to right or wrong.

In 2004, Juliette Marker, a white college freshman, and Noah King, a Black high school senior, are two lonely souls who enter each other’s orbit, forge a connection, and go home together after a night out.

Twelve years later, Noah has done the impossible and made it in Hollywood. His first film is about to be released, and he and his beloved wife Jesse, a successful writer herself, have just had a baby. Meanwhile, Juliette’s best friend Annie is back in LA for the first time in more than a decade, and makes a startling discovery about Juliette that will threaten to blow up the life Noah has struggled to build.

Spanning decades, from LA to Chicago, and told through Annie, Juliette, Noah, and Jesse’s perspectives, this powerful, provocative novel delves into one fateful night and the people affected by it, exploring how race, artistic ambition, and grief expose different versions of the same story.

“ Exposure is a must-read. In a time when so many cultural conversations turn black and white, this brilliant book provides a way to truly see two sides of a story. Ava Dellaira delivers a novel so gripping and breathtaking, you’ll be compelled to continue discussing it long after you’ve finished.”
―Stephen Chbosky , author of The Perks of Being a Wallflower

“This searingly brilliant novel defies all expectations: it is a bildungsroman, a meditation on friendship and artistic ambition, and an unflinching confrontation with the unreliability of memory and of truth. Dellaira has done the impossible; she has captured our era’s messy murky unknowing heart and done so with immense compassion and uncompromising verve and vaulted herself in the process into the top ranks of our literary culture.”
―Junot Díaz , author of This Is How You Lose Her

" Exposure pulses with electricity and grips you from page one. Dellaira perfectly captures how a singular moment in time can reverberate and change lives forever. In a thoughtful exploration of race and the pursuit of ambition, this exquisite novel illustrates how messy and elusive truth can be, blurring the lines between bad and good."
―Nancy Johnson , author of The Kindest Lie

“Ava Dellaira is a courageous and deeply empathetic author, writing with abundant control about the issues with the highest stakes: hopes, dreams, and ambition; the open wounds of grief and injustice. This novel is full of surprises, with comfort unearthed in the most unexpected places, and it explores the ways that the most unimaginable heartbreaks can metamorphose into sources of connection. As a character notes, resigned but far-sighted, considering these tender mutations: love always has the final say.”
―Sarah Blakley-Cartwright , author of Alice Sadie Celine

“Ava Dellaira’s Exposure is a compelling story of ambition, becoming, grief, and desire. Mysterious, haunting, and seductive."
―Sanjena Sathian , author of Gold Diggers

“ Exposure gracefully probes the ways the past can reach into the present and test everything we thought we knew about ourselves and those we hold close. Ava Dellaira has given us an empathetic exploration of creative ambition, grief, race, friendship, and ultimately, the strength and elasticity of love in all of its many forms. A captivating and beautifully crafted story.”
―Caitlin Mullen , author of Please See Us

"At turns tender and blistering, Exposure is a gripping story about youth, race, ambition, friendship and love, cut through with the sharp knife of grief. A story of artists in the making as well as the slippery nature of truth and memory, Exposure reveals 'how more than one thing can be true in the same breath.' Masterful.”
―Daisy Alpert Florin , author of My Last Innocent Year

"In Exposure , Dellaira explores challenging topics with a deft and unflinching gaze. The writing is sensuous, the settings sing, and the characters are complex and devastatingly real. Exposure examines grief, love, creativity, and truth, exploring the nuances and paradoxes that exist in each. A timely and profound novel.”
―Katie Bishop , author of The Girls of Summer

“Dellaira explores gender and racial power dynamics in her gripping debut . . . Readers of Celeste Ng should take note.”
― Publishers Weekly

“Creatively crafted and will captivate readers . . . Dellaira’s penetrating exploration of loss, race, artistic ambition, and truth and the complex views shared by various perspectives make for a promising adult debut.”
― Booklist

Ava Dellaira is the author of the critically acclaimed young adult novels In Search of Us and Love Letters to the Dead , which was named Best Book of the Year by Apple, Google, BuzzFeed, the New York Public Library and the Chicago Public Library. She is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where she was a Truman Capote Fellow, and the University of Chicago. She grew up in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and now lives in Altadena, CA with her husband and their two young children.