Be careful of the story you tell yourself. It might become the one you believe.

Destiny cannot count on anyone but herself. Her mother has struggled with addiction for most of Destiny’s life, moving them from town to town, bad boyfriend to bad boyfriend—including a particularly dark period in Texas, where Destiny ended up in a psychiatric hospital. But Destiny’s mother is newly sober and stable. And Destiny is falling in love.

Destiny never believed in happily ever after, but that doesn’t stop her confidence from fraying when the first guy she ever trusted casually shatters her heart. Spiraling hard, she tells a tiny, desperate lie to buy herself a moment of hope. But as the lie grows and the pressures tangle, she gets lost in her own deception, and the line between truth and fantasy starts to blur.

With time untethered and her perception in knots, Destiny must find a way to reclaim her story and weave a new ending—before the beginnings unravel.

“Anica Mrose Rissi has crafted a haunting, bold portrait of a young woman whose world has reached fever pitch, whose grief has taken on a life of its own. Unputdownable and exquisitely written, Girl Reflected in Knife is chilling yet beautiful, fantastical yet all too real, as we follow one girl through the looking glass. I will be thinking about this book for a very long time to come.”—Amber Smith, New York Times bestselling author of The Way I Used to Be and The Way I Am Now

”Anica Mrose Rissi has written one hell of a book about the way trauma shapes people and what it takes to rebuild yourself and your life on own terms. Destiny’s story of abuse, addiction, neglect, and her sheer will to survive by creating a world where she can thrive is at once elegant and bruising, bone-sharp and filmy as gossamer. I loved every exquisite sentence.” —Kathleen Glasgow, New York Times bestselling author of Girl in Pieces

“Anica Mrose Rissi has written a mind-warping gut punch of a book. I raced through this one with equal parts dread and curiosity, desperate to see how Destiny’s story would explode and unravel.”—Emily X.R. Pan, New York Times bestselling author of The Astonishing Color of After and An Arrow to the Moon

“Girl Reflected in Knife is simply jaw-dropping. It is brave and unblinking, imaginative and revelatory. Here is a true fractured fairy tale in every sense, showing the immense power in the stories you tell to yourself and the stories you need to believe in order to survive.”—Nova Ren Suma, New York Times bestselling author of The Walls Around Us and Wake the Wild Creatures

“Girl Reflected in Knife is beautiful and haunting, the kind of book that nests inside you, the kind of book you make space for and talk about and shove into the hands of everyone you know.” —Shaun David Hutchinson, award-winning author of We Are the Ants

★ “The complexity of the subject matter is matched by the delicacy of the language, and the raw authenticity of the characters’ feelings makes for a breathless, mesmerizing tale that’s presented with care and awareness of its sensitive topics….An emotionally immediate yet ethereal and darkly fantastical tale woven through with threads that ring all too true.” —Kirkus, starred review

“Rissi captures anguish with lush, harrowing language. Stitched together with fragments of a dark fairytale, the book boldly portrays how damaging addiction and mental health issues can be not only to those with them but also to their loved ones.” —Booklist

“Propulsive....Alternating clipped chapters and dreamy poetry culminate in a deceptively compact novel about learning to live, not just survive....Deftly emphasize[s] the internal struggles of a fractured girl's efforts to be cognitively present in her everyday life as she puts her world—and herself—back together." —Publishers Weekly

Coming on April 7, 2026, in hardcover, ebook, and audio

PREORDER NOW: Bookshop | B&N | Amazon | BAM | Apple Books | Libro | Audible | Indigo | Kobo | Google Play | Target | Penguin Random House | or ask for it at your local bookstore or library

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Recommended for ages 14 and up