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Emilie Autumn, The Asylum for Wayward Victorian Girls / Hadestown / Andrea di Mariotto del Minga, Deucalion and Pyrrha / Tory Adkisson, Anecdote of the Pig / Mira Lightner, When I met you / Alice Oseman, Radio Silence / Hadestown / Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath
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Lila Bellerose wouldn't call herself unlovable. Just unloved.
She's always been a bit of a mystery. It began with her parents, as all childhoods do. No one messes up a child quite like a parent. In Lila's case, her father was entirely apathetic to her existence, which, somehow, was worse than being hated. Knowing that he just didn't care stung places she didn't know could sting.
But, as children do, Lila continued her life. She ran away from home (ran away is a strong word - more like, she was swept away by a pitying dryad) and found herself at Camp Half-Blood before her tenth birthday. She waited, as most demigods do, for her mother to claim her. Life moved on, the endless slog of their lives continuing - while hers stagnated.
Luke Castellan went on a quest to the Garden of the Hesperides. Lila continued waiting. Percy Jackson averted a world war. Lila waited - and prayed. A lot. Annabeth was kidnapped. Lila kept waiting. She was nothing if not patient.
But it's only a matter of time before patience runs out, especially in a teenage demigod with ADHD. Seven years later, Camp Half-Blood looks a different place to how it was when Lila arrived, and yet she's still here, defending a space for the unclaimed in the Hermes cabin, waiting for something to happen. Luke has moved on, obsessed with revenge. Nico has disappeared in grief. Ethan Nakamura has vanished. All of Lila's companions, everyone she befriended in the Hermes cabin, they have all moved on, and left her there. Waiting for nothing.
