Release

Reviewed by: Brooke Faulkner - McArthur Public Library, Biddeford, Southern Maine Library District

Review Date: November 6, 2017

Review

A thought-provoking, moving dual narrative that alternates between one day in the life of 17-year-old smart, gay, self-aware Adam; whose evangelical Christian family's conditional love has led him to conceal much of his life from them, and the experience of Katherine, a young woman with a substance use disorder from Adam's same small Washington state town who was murdered by her boyfriend, and whose ghost, in the company of a massive faun, revisits the scene of the crime and the people tied to it.

The day explored here is a particularly eventful one for Adam - in which he must contend with bombshells dropped by both his brother and his best friend, Angela; deal with being sexually harassed by his adult supervisor at work; and prepare to put on a good face to say goodbye to his ex-boyfriend who is moving away. Also in the course of the day, he visits and has sex with his current boyfriend, in a scene both instructional in the spirit of Judy Blume's Forever, and also imbued with a similar sense of sweetness and emotional resonance as that classic teen novel. The speculative elements of this otherwise realistic fiction novel are gloriously weird and appealingly matter of fact in their presentation and though readers will likely connect more fully to Adam's nuanced, introspective story, Katherine's spirit's entanglement with what seems to be a sort of ancient and sacred spirit provides an interesting balance between the two. The simple, yet evocative writing style suits characters both well.

Ness has stated that this story is also influenced by Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway and while readers familiar with it and Blume's Forever will enjoy spotting the references and parallels, it's not necessary to have read them to appreciate this.

An unusual, smart and engrossing coming of age novel that stands out for its inventiveness and its characters.

Overall Book Score: excellent