'Major' new Holly Smale series to HarperCollins

HarperCollins Children’s Books is to publish Happy Girl Lucky, the first book in The Valentines series – described as a "major" new launch from Holly Smale, the author of the Geek Girl series.

The Valentines – sisters Hope, Faith and Mercy – have everything: fame, success, money and beauty. But what Hope wants most of all is love, and it doesn’t matter how far she has to go to find it.

The Valentines series is the follow-up to the ‘Clean Teen’ Geek Girl series, which sold over 3.4 million copies globally in 30 languages, according to the publisher, and won the Teen and Young Adult category of the Waterstones Children’s Book Prize. Happy Girl Lucky will publish on the 7th February 2019 in a paperback package with neon sprayed edges, with simultaneous e-book and audio publication. The launch will be supported by a "major" marketing and publicity campaign, which aims to position The Valentines as the "must-have" teen girl series of 2019, said HCCB.

Publisher Rachel Denwood said: "Since we launched the first Geek Girl book in 2013 it has been a true privilege and pleasure to publish Holly, whose effervescent, sensitive, funny, smart writing is an inspiration to young teens. The Valentines are coming, and the world is going to fall for them – big time.”

Smale said: “As a big sister, the complexity, comedy and sheer power of the sibling dynamic – and its ability to shape us – has always fascinated and inspired me. I have fallen so in love with the Valentine family, and HarperCollins are yet again the perfect home to bring my books to life. I can’t wait for my readers to meet Hope, Faith and Mercy, and to adore these three sisters as much as I do.”