I’m also thankful for the amazing team at New Leaf Literary: Kathleen Ortiz, for her foreign rights wizardry Danielle Barthel, for cheering me on at every turn and Suzie Townsend, Jaida Temperly, and Pouya Shahbazian, for all-around awesomeness. (All excellent qualities in an agent, not to mention a human being.) I am continually grateful for the opportunity to work with her. So I did, because she is fierce and brilliant and tireless and never wrong. But Del’s decisions have unimaginable consequences and, as she begins to fall for the Echo Simons in each world, she draws closer to a truth that the Council of Walkers is trying to hide ~ a secret that threatens the fate of the entire multiverse.ĭuring the first conversation we ever had, Joanna Volpe said: Write this book. Something strange is connecting them and it’s not just her random encounters with echo versions of the guy she likes, Simon Lane. But Del’s not big on following the rules and she secretly starts to investigate these other worlds. But when a training session in an off-key world goes horribly wrong, she is forbidden from Walking by the Council. Normally, Del can hear the dissonant frequency that each world emits as clear as a bell. As a Walker, someone who can navigate between these worlds, Del’s job is to keep all of the dimensions in harmony. Eating breakfast or skipping it, turning left instead of right, sneaking out instead of staying in bed ~ all of these choices create an alternate universe in which an echo self takes the road not travelled and makes the opposite decision.

Every time someone makes a choice, a new, parallel world branches off from the existing one.

Dissonance by Erica O'Rourke