About this item
The summer before her junior year, paleontology geek Natalie Page lands a coveted internship at an Ice Age dig site near Austin, Texas. Natalie, who's also a plus-size fashion blogger, depends on the retro style and persona she developed to shield herself from her former bullies, but vintage dresses and designer heels aren't compatible with digging for fossils.But nothing is going to dampen her spirit. She's exactly where she wants to be, and gets to work with her hero, the host of the most popular paleontology podcast in the world. And then there's Chase, the intern, who's seriously cute, and Cody, a local boy who'd be even cuter if he were less of a grouch.It's a summer that promises to be about more than just mammoths.Until it isn't.When Natalie's paleontologist hero turns out to be anything but, and steals the credit for one of her accomplishments, she has to unearth the confidence she needs to stand out in a field dominated by men. To do this, she'll have to let her true self shine, even if that means defying the rules and risking her life for the sake of a major discovery. While sifting through dirt, she finds more than fossils -- she finds out that she is truly awesome.
About the Author
Jill Baguchinsky grew up fluent in darkness and Disney. She spent much of her life on a barrier island just off the coast of Southwest Florida, where she read way too much Stephen King and dodged more hurricanes than she could count. Jill's queer YA horror novel, SO WITCHES WE BECAME, will launch in summer 2024 from Little, Brown and Company. Inspired by Jill's experience with Hurricane Irma in 2017, SWWB is a story about storm surge, female rage, and toxic bro culture. If boys will be boys, girls will fight back. Jill's first novel, a lighthearted ghost-hunting story titled SPOOKYGIRL: PARANORMAL INVESTIGATOR, won the 2011 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award for Young Adult Fiction and was published by Dutton Children's Books in 2012. In her next book, MAMMOTH (Turner 2018) , Jill tackled topics like bullying, body image, and the struggle of young women to stand out in male-dominated scientific fields. "Green Thumb," Jill's post-apocalyptic blend of science fiction, horror, and proper succulent care, was chosen by guest judge Ken Liu as a winner in Uncharted Magazine's 2021 Sci-Fi/Fantasy Short Story Award contest, and her Baba Yaga-inspired piece, "All Bitterness Burned Away," appeared in the women-in-horror anthology INTO THE FOREST: TALES OF THE BABA YAGA from Black Spot Books in late 2022. Jill still lives in Florida, but after one hurricane too many, she and her mini menagerie of rescue animals moved inland. Aside from the manatees she used to watch in her backyard canal, she doesn't miss much about island life.
