Published: 29 May 2017
ISBN: 9780143770480
Imprint: Penguin eBooks
Format: EBook
Pages: 336

Categories:

Fiction & true stories

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Pieces of You

Eileen Merriman

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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: 9780143770480
Imprint: Penguin eBooks
Format: EBook
Pages: 336

Categories:

Fiction & true stories

Share…

About the author

Eileen Merriman

Eileen Merriman is an award-winning New Zealand author of 14 novels for teen and adult audiences. Her intense and boundary-pushing books range from slow-burn thriller to dystopian science fiction to gripping medical drama, and have been variously published in the UK, Germany and Turkey as well as optioned for film and television.

Her debut YA novel, Pieces of You, was published in 2017 to much critical praise. The NZ Herald described it as ‘so compulsively readable it's hard to believe this is [Merriman’s] first published novel’ and poet and reviewer Paula Green wrote that it was ‘the kind of book you want to read in one sitting because it is so breathtakingly good…that will stay at the front of my mind all week and longer’. It was awarded a Storylines Notable Young Adult Book award and was a finalist in the Young Adult Fiction category of the New Zealand Book Awards for Children and Young Adults.

Nine more novels for young adults followed in quick succession, ranging from contemporary realism to a science fiction trilogy and a spinoff series, and these cemented Merriman as ‘an author to watch out for’. They featured in the Storylines Notable YA Books lists and Merriman was a regular finalist in the young adult fiction category of the New Zealand Book Awards for Children and Young Adults. A Trio of Sophies was also a finalist in the teen category of the Ngaio Marsh Awards for crime fiction in 2021.

In 2024, after several shortlistings, Merriman’s Catch a Falling Star won the New Zealand Book Awards Young Adult Fiction Award and NZ Booklovers Best Young Adult Book. A standalone novel exploring the backstory of a character from Catch Me When You Fall (2018), depicting the 15-year-old’s rapid spiral into a mental health crisis, the judges praised it as a ‘remarkably authentic portrayal…superbly written and frenetically paced’.

Merriman’s four works for adult audiences are populated with university students and young professionals and have been described as straddling a ‘new adult’ audience. Moonlight Sonata (2019), a deft exploration of a taboo relationship and intergenerational legacy, was longlisted for the Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction 2020. Literary journal Landfall noted the author’s ‘gift for character drawing and, even more, for landscape painting. What seems “utterly real” is, of course, a very clever web of fabrication that draws us into conundrums we might never have been asked to contemplate’. The Weekend Herald praised Merriman’s skilful crafting and propulsive narrative – so much so that ‘only the most disciplined of readers will put the book down and turn the light off at a sensible time of night.’

For the Silence of Snow (2020), Merriman drew on her extensive medical background (she works as a consultant haematologist at Auckland’s North Shore Hospital) to write an ethical drama about addiction in the medical world. ‘Merriman is an instinctive storyteller with an innate sense of timing’ wrote Nicky Pelligrino for Newsroom. ‘There's a misconception that if a novel is easy to read then it must have been easy to write. If anything the opposite is true…paring a story to the essentials – an engaging plot, authentic characters, a world that comes alive – takes real craft.’ The Spinoff’s Catherine Woulfe declared that she ‘could pick Eileen Merriman’s writing anywhere…a particular minor key that rings across each page, clear and sharp and quick’.

Her third novel for adults, Double Helix, was hailed by Newsroom’s Steve Braunias as ‘one of the 10 best novels of 2021…a love story and a tearjerker and a blazingly topical examination into assisted dying’, while The Night She Fell (2024) was a return to psychological suspense – ‘Everyone is talking about this book’ said Pip Adam in RNZ’s Book Critic and Patricia Bell wrote, ‘I literally couldn’t put the book down…a big tick for Merriman from me. She joins the high-calibre group of established and emerging crime and thriller writers in Aotearoa.’

Merriman lives in Auckland with her school-aged children and husband.

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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