Finding Yvonne

Overview

Yvonne has built her identity around her violin since childhood, turning to music as a steadying presence after her mother left the family years earlier. As her senior year winds toward graduation, that foundation starts to wobble: she suspects she isn't talented enough to win a spot at a conservatory, and the uncertainty leaves her questioning what, if anything, comes next.

At home, Yvonne's relationship with her father has grown distant and guarded, shaped by his success and his reluctance to show much of himself emotionally. Outside it, she finds an unexpected kinship with a street musician whose ease with his own playing contrasts sharply with her self-doubt. He pulls at her in ways that complicate her steady, established connection with Warren, the boy she has long counted on.

Into this mix of artistic anxiety and romantic uncertainty comes a pregnancy Yvonne never planned for, forcing her to confront a decision far weightier than any audition. Colbert follows her through the weeks that follow as she tries to figure out what she actually wants, separate from what everyone around her expects.

Beyond the Plot

Colbert, also known for Pointe and Little & Lion, has built a body of work centered on Black teenage girls navigating identity, family strain, and the gap between the lives they're expected to lead and the ones they're actually living. Finding Yvonne continues that pattern, using a classical-music backdrop to explore a more universal adolescent fear: that the thing you've organized your whole sense of self around might not be the thing you're actually best suited for.

The novel resists tidy resolution. Yvonne's artistic doubt, her strained bond with her father, and her pregnancy are treated as separate but overlapping pressures, none of which cancels the others out. Rather than building toward a single dramatic turning point, the book stays close to the ordinary, unglamorous work of a young woman trying to sort out which choices are genuinely hers and which she has simply inherited from the adults around her.

Why Finding Yvonne Has Been Challenged

Most objections to this novel cite its intended readership of high school-age teens and argue that its subject matter is too mature for that audience. Critics point in particular to Yvonne's unplanned pregnancy and the deliberation that follows, including her consideration of whether to continue it, as material they feel is inappropriate for a young adult shelf. Some challenges also take issue with the novel's frank treatment of teenage sexuality and romantic relationships more broadly, arguing that these elements normalize behavior they would rather see addressed with more caution or left out of school libraries altogether. The book has been formally challenged in one state and one district tracked in this catalog, with reviewers in those cases requesting restricted access or removal on the grounds that its handling of pregnancy and reproductive choice was unsuitable for minors rather than instructive.