Log Off

In the early 2000s, from a dial-up connection in a Western New York suburb, sixteen-year-old Ellora Gao logs on to the Internet to start a secret LiveJournal. Abandoned as a child by her troubled mother and left with her former stepfather Brian, an emotionally distant alcoholic, Ellora hopes to find the close relationships online that are missing from her real life.

But her online diary isn’t entirely serious, it’s also where she can gossip and rant about music, books, and everyone at her high school, including two intriguing new friends, Alice, a reformed bad girl, and Tiff, a cocky musical prodigy. As the school year unfolds, Ellora shares every challenge she faces with her growing LiveJournal readership: memories of her estranged mother, frustration with Brian’s lack of parenting, concern for Alice’s health, romantic feelings for Tiff, and her place in a post-Y2K world on the cusp of major change.

“If one is very fortunate, a few books will fundamentally change their life. Such is the case for me and Log Off, an indelibly wise coming-of-age story crackling with humor and nostalgia. Felicetti will heal you, delight you, and make you want to hug your younger self; Log Off is an instant classic, a heartbreaker and a balm, and we’re all the luckier for it.”

—T Kira Māhealani Madden, author of Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls

“Log Off is a time machine, brilliantly evoking the Y2K era in all its LiveJournal glory. Kristen Felicetti’s prose feels as real and intimate as making a friend on the internet for the very first time and finding the key to her diary—I loved it.”

—Chelsea Hodson, author of Tonight I’m Someone Else

“Log Off is a brilliant and inventive debut with an unforgettable voice. Kristen Felicetti’s writing is so off-handedly wise and instructive, I couldn’t help but think of Log Off as a survival manual and by the end of my reading all other survival manuals were now obsolete.”

—Bud Smith, author of Teenager