Cassidy’s Blues is a middle-grade contemporary fantasy novel. Cassidy’s Blues covers many issues and life events middle-schoolers face: friendship, bullying, social awkwardness and anxiety, and loss. It also stresses the importance of empathy and being a good friend.

Ten-year-old Cassidy Kenner is dreading the first day of school, again. This year, her social anxiety is the least of her problems. A troublesome ancestral power awakens within Cassidy when interacting with the new girl at school. This curse, as Cassidy considers it, allows her to see and feel the sadness of others and urges her to help. With her powers growing by the day, Cassidy must find a way to control them while maintaining her ordinary life.

To succeed, Cassidy will have to do more than avoid sad people: she must come to terms with her crippling anxiety; save the new girl from the darkness that surrounds her; fix her own crumbling relationship with her best and only friend; and travel to an alternate world whose very survival hangs on the balance of her powers.

Readers who like a story offering a wide array of emotions will love Cassidy’s Blues.