This Terrible True Thing

A Visual Novel

By: Jenny Laden

Narrated by: Gail Shalan

2024 Audie Award Winner for Best Young Adult Audiobook!

In this heartbreaking multimedia debut—filled with drawings, poems, and journal entries—author Jenny Laden draws on her own experience to create a story of grief and transcendence, perfect for fans of Francesca Zappia and Jennifer Niven.

Danielle Silver is a Philadelphia high school senior at the dawn of the ’90s. Ever since her parents split up, she has known her father was gay, but she never expected to be hit with the bombshell that he is HIV positive. As he sickens, and AIDS starts to claim the lives of his friends, Danielle searches for silver linings while trying to balance paralyzing fear, grief, her social life, and schoolwork—capturing all the feelings as adolescence and some hard facts collide.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.

©2023 Jenny Laden (P)2023 Blackstone Publishing

Important story with skilled narration

This poignant story is beautifully told. It tells important truths about the aids epidemic. I love how the narrator brings the diverse characters to life in a very believable way. So much so that
I was in tears at points.

A powerful and moving semi-autobiography

A teenager in the 1980's has to mature rapidly to adapt to her parents' separation, divorce, her father's realization and confession to his children of his sexual identification as gay, and tragically his contraction of AIDS followed quite quickly by his death. The difficult progression of events is written with great compassion, woven into the already complicated life of a young girl grappling with her own sexual awakening. Very well written by the author, movingly conveyed by the reader.