My Flawless Life, the fifth young adult novel from alumna Yvonne Woon ’10 (CC ’06), is out now from Katherine Tegen Books.
The protagonist of My Flawless Life is Hana, a young “fixer” attending an elite private school in Washington, DC. Her reputation is impeccable, until her own father is arrested for a hit-and-run accident and she’s cast out into social exile. Suddenly, her life is a mess even she can’t fix–and then comes the anonymous phone call, offering to hire her for a mysterious and potentially dangerous new job.
The first chapter of the novel is excerpted on Epic Reads. In this selection, Woon stages the portrait gallery at St. Francis, Hana's private school, and introduces Hana in the aftermath of her social ostracism. Woon writes, “The room that evening was humming with people. We were there for the fall alumni gala, which was billed as a night for students to network with alumni about colleges, but it was really a fundraising event for the school. Every event in the Washington, DC, area is, at heart, a fundraiser, you just have to figure out who has the money and who’s asking for it. In the hierarchy of fancy parties, alumni galas, even at a school like St. Francis, weren’t high on the list of places to be seen at, but my family and I had long stopped being invited to public events, so the ones at St. Francis were all I had left.”
The novel received a starred review from Publishers Weekly, which said, “Woon crafts a meticulously plotted mystery entrenched in high-society scandal and high school drama and peopled by complex, ever-evolving protagonists. It’s a blistering commentary on privilege and wealth.”
My Flawless Life is available for purchase here.
Yvonne Woon is from Worcester, Massachusetts. She is the recipient of a 2022 Prose Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. She is the author of five young adult novels, including the Dead Beautiful series and If You, Then Me. Her short fiction has appeared in the Boston Review. She has worked as a nanny, a ghostwriter, a dog walker, a university writing instructor, a tutor, a seafood salesperson, and a grocery clerk. She lives in Decatur, Georgia, with her husband, two children, and two cats. She’s working on her first novel for adults.
