By Annabel Pitcher
Little Brown Books for Young Readers, 272 pgs. 2013
This book was unique, unsettling, and I still am not sure how I feel after reading it. It was so different in it's approach and protagonist that the story is still with me and I am still thinking about it. So it is really a great book to have me thinking about it and wanting to discuss it this many weeks after. Zoe is writing letters to a Texas Death row inmate about her last year or so of secrets and anxieties. They aren't the normal teenage secrets though and she is telling him her story of falling for two boys and one ends up dead. She wholeheartedly takes the blame for killing this boy and tells the inmate her story. The concept is completely different from any book I have read as the letters are written to the inmate, Mr Harris, but Zoe purposefully gives no address for response.
In doing this the author has created a raw, uninhibited version of Zoe's story and I had so many up and down emotions through out because of it. I felt for Zoe, I felt for these two brothers she fell in like and love with and I couldn't decide by the end who I felt worse for. Zoe has had a rough year of keeping this secret and dealing with the town's reactions to the boy's death, to her family's reactions knowing she was "dating" him and the loss of both loves as the outcome. Zoe is a vibrant character who is trying to get back to normal and the unconventional story makes for a fast read.
EW
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