Kaitlyn’s Wheel by debut novelist Chris Halvorson is the ultimate teen romance… but with a supernatural and environmental twist. 

In rural Iowa, eighteen-year-old Kaitlyn Stokes witnesses a UFO over her house the night her father dies of cancer, giving her reason to believe he was taken by aliens. She secretly hopes he may someday return as an “ancient astronaut,” a theory based on modern science. 

In the Pacific Northwest, Zachary Taylor sarcastically tells his high school principal that he was abducted by aliens, his excuse for skipping classes the day before. When the school secretary overhears him, she tells her teenage daughter and the story goes viral on social media, leading to a frenzy of TV news reporters outside his house.

Seeking answers, Kaitlyn connects with Zachary and their love story begins. With graduation just months away, they could soon overcome the distance between them – or so they plan until Kaitlyn discovers their relationship was built on a prankish lie. Brokenhearted and lost, Kaitlyn is greeted by a surprise visitor who gives her fatherly advice and the suggestion that a higher intelligence may have brought her and Zachary together for reasons no one could have ever expected. 

Kaitlyn’s Wheel is reminiscent of Mike Chen’s Light Years from Home, Lindsay Ellis’s Axiom’s End and Truth of the Divine, and the teenage drama in various John Green novels.