Lelina Durrette was born in New York City and raised in Guinea, West Africa by globe-trotting parents. After pinballing around Europe as an accidental tourist in her teens via boarding school, she landed briefly in Virginia, where she earned a degree in Psychology and became a wife and mother. After moving to Texas with her husband and children, she put her nomadic lifestyle behind her and settled into the role of carpool mom and caretaker. These days, she enjoys cooking gourmet meals in her postage-stamp-sized kitchen and exchanging witty banter with her cat, Ernestine. The Girl Who Was Too Much and Not Enough is her first Young Adult novel.