Genre: Contemporary Middle-Grade Fiction
Content Rating: G. Written for middle-grade audience.
At thirteen, Orion Casey has stopped singing—and it’s not because she stopped loving it. After the girls everyone follows start talking about her instead of to her, she’s finished performing for anyone.
Then the messages start.
Anonymous. Encouraging. A little too perfectly timed.
Someone’s been watching her—really seeing her—and part of Orion can’t help hoping it’s the one person she wishes would notice her back. The texts give Orion confidence she didn’t know she had—enough to discover songwriting and a new way back to her music.
Best Friends launches The Orion Sessions, a contemporary middle-grade series about friendship, self-confidence, and learning what it means to sing—and live—for yourself.
Cheryl DaVeiga grew up loving music—singing, writing, and dreaming in melodies. Following that passion was never framed as a real option, so she chose a path that felt defined and practical, building a career in accounting and eventually becoming a partner at a national firm.
Years later, she found her way back to the music she had set aside, becoming an award-winning songwriter recognized by ASCAP and ultimately discovering the joy of writing children’s books. Across her seven picture books—stories infused with music, humor, and sing-along joy—her work has received award recognition from the Eric Hoffer Book Awards, Mom’s Choice Awards (Gold), Purple Dragonfly Book Awards, and Literary Titan.
But even as she wrote those playful stories, she knew there was another one waiting—one rooted in the girl she used to be and the voice she had tucked away. That story became The Orion Sessions, a middle-grade trilogy for kids growing up in the real world—with music, of course. The Orion Sessions is the series Cheryl wishes she’d had when she was twelve: full of music, friendship, mistakes, courage, and the journey of reclaiming the voice she’d hidden to fit in.
Cheryl lives in Tucson with her partner, Doug, and they spend summers in New Jersey. She still sings… like all the time.
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