July Camp '21: When I Was Anna

Marching band season is here, and 16-year-old Summer is hoping to drum her way to the band’s victory. She needs to use this year to prove to her band directors that she’s the perfect person to choose as the next drumline section leader. More than anything, she’s hoping that drum major Micah notices she exists. She’s had a crush on him all summer, but her crippling social anxiety keeps her from being able to say more than a few words to him.

When Summer learns about an app called Chat With Me, she realizes there’s a way to get to know Micah without all of the anxiety-provoking social interaction she dreads, and she creates the persona Anna Blackwell. Summer may see Micah every day at school, but it’s not until she’s home and under her Anna disguise that she talks to him in secret about things she would never have the courage to say in person. He’s so easy to talk to, and before long they’re both sharing secrets hidden from even their real-life friends, like the fact that she has alopecia and wears a wig to school every day.

All she wanted was a low pressure way to get to know Micah without her anxiety getting in the way. But the more she gets to know Micah as Anna, the more she likes him and the more she worries about how she’s going to come clean. Micah wants to meet Anna Blackwell, and she’s running out of excuses. Her friends are suspicious, her performance in band is slipping and threatening her chance at section leader, and if she wants a real shot at a relationship, she’s going to have to tell him the truth and hope he can look past her lie.

Catfish: The TV Show meets Tweet Cute (Emma Lord) in WHEN I WAS ANNA, a YA contemporary romance told in a mix of prose and the online conversations between Summer and Micah.