Amber Smith Books in Order

Amber Smith grew up in Buffalo, New York, where art, stories, and creative work were already a big part of her life. She stayed in Buffalo for college, earning a BFA in Painting and a master’s degree in Art History from the University at Buffalo.

Before she wrote novels, Smith worked in the art and museum world for about a decade. After moving to Charlotte, North Carolina, in 2009, she spent six years in the modern and contemporary art department at the Mint Museum. That work sharpened her nonfiction writing, especially as she researched artists, objects, and the stories behind them.

Fiction came later, after Smith had settled into Charlotte and started writing seriously.

Her first young adult novel, The Way I Used to Be, arrived in 2016. It follows Eden through the years after a sexual assault by her brother’s best friend, showing how trauma can reshape friendships, family life, trust, and a person’s sense of self. The book became a New York Times bestseller and opened a longer story that continues with The Way I Am Now and the forthcoming The Way We Become.

Smith’s books often stay close to teenagers who are carrying something difficult, whether it is grief, violence at home, a painful secret, or the uncertainty of first love. She writes about recovery without pretending it is quick or tidy. Her characters make mistakes, pull away from people, try again, and slowly figure out what they need.

The Last to Let Go centers on Brooke Winters, whose mother is arrested after killing Brooke’s abusive father. In Something Like Gravity, neighbors Chris and Maia find a connection while each deals with fear, loss, and big changes in their lives. Chris is a transgender boy coming to terms with an assault and an uneasy relationship with his parents, while Maia is grieving her older sister.

She also writes for younger readers. Her middle grade debut, Code Name: Serendipity, follows eleven-year-old Sadie and a stray dog named Dewey, with family changes, friendship, and a little telepathy mixed in.

Smith co-wrote the late-1990s queer romance Fade Into You with her wife, Sam Gellar. The novel brings together Bird, an aspiring poet, and music-loving Jessa, two girls who start out trying to break up their best friends’ unhealthy relationship and end up confronting feelings of their own.

Her work also includes nonfiction about art, history, culture, and biography, plus a contribution to the YA anthology Our Stories, Our Voices. Across both fiction and nonfiction, she has kept returning to questions of identity, belonging, and the stories people tell when they are trying to understand their lives.

Smith now lives in the Finger Lakes region of New York with Gellar and their rescued dogs and cats. The pair also own an independent bookstore and coffee shop in Dryden, New York.

Her books make room for hard conversations, but they also leave room for connection and hope.