Rapids by Anna Bowles

Yan Harris is VERY EXCITED.

Well, of course she is. It's summer, she's got over her depression and she's in London for a week with her BFF Chelsea. After seventeen years in a sleepy village where everybody just knows them as The Chinese One and The Brainy One... life is calling.

It's a pretty cool prospect... if Chel can stop worrying about discourse in the Nordhelm fandom long enough to enjoy it. Chelsea's worried about Yan, too, to Yan's annoyance.

Barely sleeping, barely eating, getting increasingly gobby, having an - ahem - close encounter in a toilet, giving a Tory MP a good kick in the shins, and running around kind of literally screaming... well, it's all just good summer fun, isn't it?

Isn't it?

In the desperate battle of Yan vs. bipolar disorder, does the poor disease really stand a chance?

Written by an author who lives with bipolar herself, this is a hilarious yet edge-of-your-seat ride, with friendship at its heart. Perfect for fans of Holly Bourne and Alice Oseman.

"This book nails it-not just the vertiginous flights of bipolar, but also the pure joy of youth." - Marya Hornbacher, author of Wasted and Madness: a Bipolar Life

"Cleverly written, fast-paced and engaging. I rattled through it, desperate to know what happened." - Nicola Morgan, author of Blame My Brain

"You don't want to miss this story, it will hit you like a tidal wave." - Lucas Maxwell, UK School Librarian of the Year 2017

"It's impossible not to fall in love with Yan." - Tabitha Suzuma, author of Forbidden and A Note of Madness

"Authentic, dazzling and a vivid demonstration of why neurodivergent "own voices" are so important." - Eric Lindstrom, author of Not if I See You First and A Tragic Kind of Wonderful

"Witty, inventive and incredibly immersive. Yan is a brilliant, heart-breaking character." -

Elen Caldecott, author of The Short Knife

Anna grew up in one of the parts of Cheltenham unlikely to feature on postcards. After an unorthodox adolescence that involved more scholarships and boarding-school encounters with princesses than are normally found outside the pages of novels, she took up following the Manic Street Preachers around the country for a hobby (in the Richey days, when they were good, mind) before heading to Oxford to study English, followed by Russian Studies at UCL.

She worked variously as a secretary, a magazine assistant, a live TV subtitler, a newspaper sub-editor, and a government media monitor before settling down to edit children's and YA books at publishers such as Hachette and Egmont. In 2021 she published her first novel, Rapids, which is about a girl with bipolar disorder who has no intention of letting that - or anything else - slow her down. According to clients, Editor Anna is 'antivirus software for your manuscript', and she can be hired at https://annabowles.co.uk/services-for-writers.