Happy Monday and welcome to my stop on the Girls Like Us tour! I’m so excited to share an excerpt of this wonderful book with you today! Read on to find out more about the book and the author, plus enter a giveaway for a print copy of Girls Like Us!

Set in the summer of 1972, this moving YA historical novel is narrated by teen girls from different backgrounds with one thing in common: Each girl is dealing with pregnancy.Four teenage girls. Four different stories. What they all have in common is that they’re dealing with unplanned pregnancies.

In rural Georgia, Izella is wise beyond her years, but burdened with the responsibility of her older sister, Ola, who has found out she’s pregnant. Their young neighbor, Missippi, is also pregnant, but doesn’t fully understand the extent of her predicament. When her father sends her to Chicago to give birth, she meets the final narrator, Susan, who is white and the daughter of an anti-choice senator.

Randi Pink masterfully weaves four lives into a larger story – as timely as ever – about a woman’s right to choose her future.

“Come here, you.” Mrs. Mac lifted her unsteady hand. Her hand reminded Ola of the screen door hanging on its hinges. “I’ll read you.”

Ola walked forward, intentionally ignoring the mess at her feet. She wanted to be read. She wanted to know if her and Walter’s picket fence would be white or red. She wanted to find out, once and for all, how many kids they’d have. She wanted to look into her beautiful future and know. She needed to know.

Ola looked at the old woman and smiled, she’d won. She was about to get read.

Mrs. Mac grabbed her hand tighter than Ola thought possible. She cried out in pain, but the old woman wouldn’t let go. The pain changed. It started as a simple squeeze, like when the nurse is taking blood pressure, and it turned into a heat like embers. Her hand burned so badly Ola felt tears streaming from the side of her eye. Just as quickly as she’d snatched her hand, the woman let go. It couldn’t have been more than a few seconds, but it felt like an hour.

Mrs. Mac stared wide eyed at the front of Ola’s neck. She squinted her blind eyes as if she was focusing in on a small bit of something near Ola’s Adam’s apple. “Lean in closer,” she said.

Ola leaned in a bit.

“Closer than that, you.”

She leaned in closer still.

Squinting at Ola’s neck, Mrs. Mac whispered, almost pitying, “You’ve got a heartbeat in your neck, gal.”

Izella leaped from her seated position and grasped her mouth in horror. But Ola had no idea what that meant. She grabbed her neck, thinking she’d been snake-bitten or rubbed too much into some poison oak. From the look on Izella’s face, it had to be bad. “What is it? What does that mean? What’s on me?”

“It ain’t what’s on you,” said Mrs. Mac. “It’s what’s in you. That garbageman already coming for you, child.”