Description
Wonderful Feels Like This by Sara Lövestam, translated by Laura A. Wideburg, is a young adult coming-of-age novel about loneliness, music and an unexpected friendship across generations.
For Steffi, school is an exercise in survival. She has never fitted in and is viciously bullied by the other girls in her class. Jazz is her escape, so when she hears her favourite song playing through an open window at a retirement home, she goes inside and meets Alvar, an elderly man who once dreamed of joining a jazz band in wartime Sweden.
Their friendship gives Steffi the courage to imagine a different future, one in which she can leave her small town, audition for music school in Stockholm and become a real musician. But as she learns more about Alvar’s past, she begins to discover unexpected connections between his story, her school, the retirement home and even the girl who bullies her.
Warm and thoughtful, this is a story about the power of music, the bonds between generations and how the people we least expect can help us find our place in the world.
