The Heartbreak Bakery
āĻāĻ āĻ āĻĄāĻŋāĻāĻŦā§āĻā§āĻ° āĻŦāĻŋāĻˇā§ā§
Teenage baker Syd sends ripples of heartbreak through Austinâs queer community when a batch of post-being-dumped brownies turns out to be magicalâand makes everyone who eats them break up.
âWhatâs done is done.â Unless, of course, it was done by my brownies. Then itâs getting undone.â
Syd (no pronouns, please) has always dealt with big, hard-to-talk-about things by baking. Being dumped is no different, except now Syd is baking at the Proud Muffin, a queer bakery and community space in Austin. And everyone who eats Sydâs breakup brownies ... breaks up. Even Vin and Alec, who own the Proud Muffin. And their breakup might take the bakery down with it.
Being dumped is one thing; causing ripples of queer heartbreak through the community is another. But the cute bike delivery person, Harley (he or they, check the pronoun pin, itâs probably on the messenger bag), believes Syd about the magic baking. And Harley believes Sydâs magical baking can fix things, tooâone recipe at a time.
āĻ˛ā§āĻāĻ āĻ¸āĻŽā§āĻĒāĻ°ā§āĻā§
A.R. Capetta (all pronouns), the author of Echo After Echo and The Lost Coast, has lived in Austin and worked as a professional baker and holds a master of fine arts in writing for children and young adults from Vermont College of Fine Arts. A. R. Capetta is married to author Cory McCarthy; they live in Vermont with their young baker.
Krystal Hammond is a narrator/writer, cancer survivor, and nonbinary queer human. They grew up in rural North Carolina, nurtured by a steady diet of local Black Beard legends and Civil War-era ghost stories. These nuggets of folktale and myth fostered a lifelong love of storytelling and all the drama that goes with it, resulting in loads of trunk novels and dozens of audiobooks. They have a passion for science fiction, fantasy, and horror, YA and middle grade novels, and romantic comedies.
