> Skip to content
  • Published: 29 May 2017
  • ISBN: 9780143770473
  • Imprint: Penguin
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 336
  • RRP: $22.00

Pieces of You




Wise, tough, heart-breaking, funny, this compulsive love story is about facing your demons.

Wise, tough, heart-breaking, funny, this compulsive love story is about facing your demons.

Fifteen-year-old Rebecca McQuilten moves with her parents to a new city. Lonely but trying to fit in, she goes to a party, but that’s when things really fall apart.

I couldn’t tell anyone what had happened. Especially since I was the new girl in town. Who would want to believe me?

Things look up when she meets gregarious sixteen-year-old Cory Marshall.

‘You’re funny, Becs,’ Cory said.
‘You have no idea,’ I said, and clearly he didn’t, but I was smiling anyway.
And after that, he was all I could think about.

Cory helps Rebecca believe in herself and piece her life back together; but that’s before he shatters it all over again . . .

  • Published: 29 May 2017
  • ISBN: 9780143770473
  • Imprint: Penguin
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 336
  • RRP: $22.00

About the author

Eileen Merriman

Eileen Merriman’s first young adult novel, Pieces of You, was published in 2017, and was a finalist in the NZ Book Awards for Children and Young Adults and a Storylines Notable Book. Since then, a stream of novels for adults and young adults have followed. She has received huge critical praise, with one reviewer saying: ‘Merriman is an instinctive storyteller with an innate sense of timing.’ In addition to being a regular finalist in the NZ Book Awards for Children and Young Adults, Merriman was a finalist in the 2021 Ngaio Marsh Award for Best Crime Novel and Moonlight Sonata was longlisted for the Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction 2020. Editions of some of her young adult novels have been released in Germany, Turkey and the UK and three have been optioned for film or TV, including the Black Spiral Trilogy.

Her other awards include runner-up in the 2018 Sunday Star-Times Short Story Award and third in the same award for three consecutive years previously. She works as a consultant haematologist at North Shore Hospital.

Also by Eileen Merriman

See all

Praise for Pieces of You

I found it to be compelling, challenging, and heartbreaking, but very real. It handles teen issues with grace and sensitivity but doesn't shy away from honesty.

Katherine Granich, Tots to Teens

Eileen Merriman’s debut YA novel Pieces of You is the kind of book you want to read in one sitting because it is so breathtakingly good. It is like a globe artichoke: sweet, layered, bitter. . . . this is an acute reading experience. It feels utterly real. It does not smudge the tough stuff. It is kaleidoscopic in both emotion and everyday detail. Detail that animates the lives of two teens. . . . Eileen writes with such a flair for dialogue, for family circumstances, for teenage struggles and joys. This is the kind of book that will stay at the front of my mind all week and longer – I recommend it highly.

Paula Green, Poetry Shelf

. . . really well done and sensitive . . . beautiful and tragic at the same time . . . a really good book . . . a controversial book

James Russell, Radio NZ

Welcome to New Zealand author Eileen Merriman’s debut YA novel, Pieces of You, which could well become one of the biggest local YA books of the year. It’s intelligent, literate—chapter headings reference classical and contemporary books—without becoming too scholarly, it’s pertinent, witty when it needs to be, thought-provoking and relatable.

Dionne Christian, NZ Herald

She absolutely nails the 15/16-year-old teenage girl mentality: the obsessive self-consciousness, the mood swings, the narrow focus on this very second of time and the belief that it’s all about them. . . The love interest in the story will keep the pages flying for many readers, I imagine. And here, again, Merriman’s acute observation and awareness of teen mentality comes to the fore. It all feels very real and fresh . . . what makes this novel fresh is her focus on the minutia of the teens’ lives and her awareness of teen mentality.

Denis Wright, The Sapling

This is quality New Zealand fiction for the young adult reader in your family. . . . Merriman captures the highs and lows, insecurities and the search for purpose as a young adult navigates their way into adulthood. A very honest, relevant and sometimes raw, novel.

Wairarapa Times-Age Weekend

This tragic teen romance is so compulsively readable it's hard to believe this is Kiwi writer Eileen Merriman's first published novel. . . I defy anyone to put Pieces of You down once they have started it. Not since John Green's 2012 novel The Fault in Our Stars have I read anything quite so tragically sweet.

Diane McCarthy, Eastern Bay Life

This book was nothing but a brilliant piece of young adult literature and I am so glad that I was able to have the chance to read something that brought a fraction of my teenage reality to life. I've never come across a novel that has been able to pin point specific issues that teenagers struggle with every day and has been able to resolve it in a way that doesn't leave you feeling frustrated and ripped off. I'd like to personally award Eileen Merriman for writing the most accurate and unbelievably heartfelt young adult debut EVER!

Ella Fleming, Words of Euphoric Nostalgia bookblog

Eileen Merriman creates genuine teenage characters . . . If anything is taken away by the reader from reading this book, it's understanding the importance of consent . . .The permeation of daily student life and goals makes Pieces of You so understandable, and therefore enjoyable, for the average teenage reader. . . . Merriman really knows what she's doing when developing Rebecca's (or Becs, as Cory calls her) and Cory's relationship, with heartstring-tugging lines that make you wish you were in the story. . . . it really is the metaphorical journey and the relationships of the characters within the novel that make this book worth reading.

Flora Fan, NZ Books

Pieces of You is the typical YA coming-of-age novel that surprisingly offers more than a cliche. Not least, it is uniquely set in a familiar setting of Auckland. Eileen Merriman creates genuine teenage characters – one aspect within the YA genre that often feels lacking or underdeveloped, and so is much appreciated when done right. . . . Regrets, anger, new beginnings, you name it – they’re all there. Even though, in this sense, Pieces of You doesn’t offer anything particularly new, it really is the metaphorical journey and the relationships of the characters within the novel that make this book worth reading.

Flora Fan, aged 16, hookedonbooks.org.nz

Awards & recognition

Storylines Notable Book Award

Awarded  •  2018  •  Notable Book

New Zealand Book Awards for Children and Young Adults

Shortlisted  •  2018  •  NZ Awards for Children and Young Adults

Discover more

Article
Pieces of You Instagrammer reviews

We asked some of our Instagram community to review advance copies of Pieces of You – here's what they had to say.

Article
Short story club - 22 February

Read the story being discussed on Jesse Mulligan’s show on Radio New Zealand on 22 February 2018.