Barely Missing Everything – Hill Nadell Literary Agency

Barely Missing Everything cover Barely Missing Everything paperback Barely Missing Everything Spanish
(Hardcover) (Paperback) (Spanish language edition)

Matt Mendez
Barely Missing Everything
(S&S/Atheneum/Caitlyn Dlouhy, Hardcover March 2019, Paperback March 2020, Spanish language edition April 2020)

Matt Mendez’s Event Schedule

2020 International Latino Book Awards, Best Young Adult Fiction Book – English, 2nd Place Winner
Nominated for the 2020 MPIBA Reading the West Book Award: Young Adult
A Kirkus Reviews Best Book of 2019
In The Margins 2020 Recommended Fiction List
Apple Books ‘Best Books for March’ pick
Featured on Seventeen Magazine‘s list of “The 25 Best YA Books of 2019 So Far”
One of BookRiot‘s “25 YA Books to Add to Your Winter TBR”
One of Barnes & Noble Teen Blog‘s “29 of Our Most Anticipated YAs of 2019: January – June”
Featured on Barnes & Noble Teen Blog‘s “37 of The Best YA Books of March”
A Project LIT Community 2019/2020 Book Club Selection
One of The Monitor‘s “6 YA Novels to Add to Your Summer Reading List”
One of NBCLatino‘s “Summer reads: 10 new Latino books”
One of NBCNews‘s Best Latino Books 2019

In the tradition of Jason Reynolds and Matt de la Peña, this heartbreaking, no-holds-barred debut novel told from three points of view explores how difficult it is to make it in life when you—your life, brown lives—don’t matter.

Juan has plans. He’s going to get out of El Paso, Texas, on a basketball scholarship and make something of himself—or at least find something better than his mom Fabi’s cruddy apartment, her string of loser boyfriends, and a dead dad. Basketball is going to be his ticket out, his ticket up. He just needs to make it happen.

His best friend JD has plans, too. He’s going to be a filmmaker one day, like Quinten Tarantino or Guillermo del Toro (NOT Steven Spielberg). He’s got a camera and he’s got passion—what else could he need?

Fabi doesn’t have a plan anymore. When you get pregnant at sixteen and have been stuck bartending to make ends meet for the past seventeen years, you realize plans don’t always pan out, and that there some things you just can’t plan for…

Like Juan’s run-in with the police, like a sprained ankle, and a tanking math grade that will likely ruin his chance at a scholarship. Like JD causing the implosion of his family. Like letters from a man named Mando on death row. Like finding out this man could be the father your mother said was dead.

Soon Juan and JD are embarking on a Thelma and Louise–like road trip to visit Mando. Juan will finally meet his dad, JD has a perfect subject for his documentary, and Fabi is desperate to stop them. But, as we already know, there are some things you just can’t plan for…

Praise for Barely Missing Everything

“There are moments when a story shakes you…Barely Missing Everything is one of those stories, and Mendez, a gifted storyteller with a distinct voice, is sure to bring a quake to the literary landscape.”
—Jason Reynolds, New York Times bestselling author of Long Way Down

“Matt Mendez writes on target about people who are barely surviving in an America all too familiar to those who live on the borderlands. I thank him for making room for them on the pages of American literature. He has done so with respect, honor, and deep love.”
—Sandra Cisneros, American Book Award winner and author of The House on Mango Street

“Mendez offers enticing glimpses of Mexican-American life, and he has an uncanny ability to capture the aimless bluster of young boys posturing at confidence, behaving rashly to mask feeling insecure.”
–The New York Times

“In this novel with a deep sense of place and realistic dialogue, characters who are vivid and fallible add deep psychological meaning to a heart-wrenching story. At once accessible and artful, this is an important book about Mexican teens holding onto hope and friendship in the midst of alcoholism, poverty, prejudice, and despair.”
–Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“Mendez’s heartbreaking and beautiful story offers stunning insights into the lives of working-class citizens living on the borderlands — a place of difficult choices, but also of persistent possibility.”
–Rigoberto González, NBC Latino

“A heart-wrenching, perceptive story about friendship and growing up Hispanic in El Paso, Texas. We were hooked on this book from the first chapter to the last page.”
–Apple Books

“Searing…Mendez brings Juan and his world to life with vivid, honest characters and events that shine a light on what it can mean to be Mexican-American and poor in America.”
–Publishers Weekly

“Mendez minces no words as he presents issues that are all too real for many Latin American communities. . . . Mendez’s attention to raw detail in plot and diction is both painful and illuminating. With its shades of social justice, this will appeal to readers of Jason Reynolds.”
–Booklist

“When Matt Mendez wrote this book he reached deeply into a world that needs a spotlight. He invited us into some really dark and possibly unfamiliar corners. Life doesn’t go in a straight line for these guys and it didn’t go in a straight line for their parents either. Here are the generations laid bare with their own challenges, their own pain, their own mistakes. You don’t just read about these lives and these choices, you walk the mile in their shoes hoping that something is going to finally break in their favor. You want them to reach to the good stuff inside themselves and to stop giving away bits and pieces of themselves every day.”
–Barb Langridge, A Book and a Hug

“Barely Missing Everything is a tragic, heartfelt, important story which we need more of in YA. Growing up poor, with dreams for a better life and how sometimes when life gives you lemons, it is not always easy to make lemonade. This book had me in tears, and hoping and praying that the lives of these boys would somehow get better. In this Brown Lives Matter Too story, you will become invested and rooting for Juan.”
–The Monitor

Matt Mendez grew up in central El Paso, Texas. He received an MFA from the University of Arizona and is the author of the short story collection Twitching Heart. He lives with his wife and two daughters in Tucson, Arizona. Barely Missing Everything is his debut young adult novel. You can visit him at MattMendez.com.