VOX NOVA

Sixteen-year-old Kaia Thompson has spent most of her life preparing for one thing: the chance to sing.

Raised at the Academy, where talent is trained, shaped, and carefully guided, Kaia has always known that being chosen could change everything. So when her name is called for Vox Nova, Mercado's biggest televised singing competition, it feels like the beginning of the life she's been waiting for.

And suddenly, everything is bigger.

The stage. The lights. The crowds. The pressure.

For the first time, Kaia isn't singing inside the familiar walls of the Academy. She's singing for all of Mercado-and discovering what it feels like to have millions of people watching.

But somewhere between rehearsals, performances, and the constant threat of elimination, Vox Nova becomes something Kaia didn't expect. There are friendships she never saw coming. Moments that feel more like home than anywhere she's ever known.

And then there's Elias.

Quiet, thoughtful, and usually found with a guitar in his hands, Elias doesn't seem to belong to the spectacle of Vox Nova. But in a world that never seems to stop watching, the quiet moments Kaia shares with him begin to matter more than she expected.

Because beneath the lights of Mercado, not everything is as simple as it seems.

Kaia has spent her whole life believing that talent could determine her future.

What she doesn't know is how much of that future has already been decided.

VOX NOVA, the first book in The Mercado Trilogy, is a young adult dystopian story about music, connection, first love, and finding your own voice in a world built to shape it.