Oklahoma City. Nic Summers is equal parts excited and nervous. Determined to excel, the seventeen-year-old strives to find time to survive physics, build confidence, and enter a competitive art mentorship. But the principled teen’s stress skyrockets when a protest video results in them and a trans friend being forced by the school to move to the girls’ dorm.
Burning with a strong sense of justice, the normally shy teenager summons the courage to speak out against damaging state legislation. But when the vision goes viral, they’re shocked when the authorities hand down an ultimatum: stop or be expelled.
Can Nic dig deep and prevail against institutional bullies ready to erase their identity?
Sharing the plight of those too often silenced, author Kelly Vincent opens the door to understanding and empathy. Through the eyes of a big-hearted main character, Vincent leads the way toward accepting and appreciating each other’s differences.
Ugliest is the inspiring third book in The Art of Being Ugly contemporary YA series. If you like protagonists who grow, making a positive impact, and standing up for the underdog, then you’ll love Kelly Vincent’s soul-stirring tale.
Buy Ugliest to find a voice today!
Kelly Vincent wrangles data weekdays and spends the rest of their time playing with words. They grew up in Oklahoma but have moved around quite a bit, with Glasgow, Scotland being their favorite stop. They now live near Seattle with several cats who help them write their stories by strategically walking across the keyboard, with their first novel, Finding Frances, a fine example of this technique. Their subsequent books, Ugly, Always the New Girl, Binding Off, and Uglier, were released in 2022 and 2023. Finding Frances and Always the New Girl won several indie awards and Ugly was selected as the Honor book for SCBWI’s Spark Award in the Books for Older Readers category for 2022. Kelly has a Master of Fine Arts in creative writing from Oklahoma City University’s Red Earth program. Find them at kellyvincent.net and @kvbooks on Instagram.