Library's review
That ... is not the best way
Are your eyes rolling yet? Mine were rolling, because while I have the utmost sympathy for anyone's high-school nightmare scenarios (I had one of those myself) I am no longer at a life stage where I find such tales to be particularly interesting. And Hawthorn is written (to me) as a rather young 17-year-old. I would have bought the angst and such much more readily if she had been, say, 13 or 14 instead. And yet ...
The plot revolves around the disappearance of Lizzie Lovett, a young woman who graduated from Hawthorn's high school several years earlier, and who was the epitome of everything Hawthorn hates about school. She was pretty, she was outgoing, everyone liked her, she had her whole life together. So when she disappears while on a camping trip with her boyfriend, Hawthorn becomes obsessed with figuring out what happened. She is convinced that Lizzie is a werewolf, who shape-shifted into her natural self and bounded away. And she really believes it, and goes looking for evidence to prove it. (Perhaps you can see why I had trouble buying that she was a senior in high school. She sounds like a seventh grader, doesn't she?)
But then the book takes a turn, very much for the better. The Lizzie mystery is solved, but what it leaves behind is a young woman struggling to cope with the truth. This last third or so of the book is quite good, with some really thoughtful discussions and depictions of depression and guilt and the quest for life's true meaning, and in general the sort of complex feelings that late adolescents spend most of their time obsessing about. It felt very natural and real, and pretty much redeemed the rest of the book for me.
Now, whether you want to wade through the first two-thirds of teen angst to get there, I can't say. But it was a refreshing twist to have a book end on a high note instead of the other way around.
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Romance. Humor (Fiction.) Young Adult Fiction. Young Adult Literature. HTML:Meet Hawthorn Creely. She's not one to get involved in other people's business. But a missing person's investigation? That's another matter... Hawthorn wasn't trying to insert herself into a missing person's investigation. Or maybe she was. But that's only because Lizzie Lovett's disappearance is the one fascinating mystery their sleepy town has ever had. Bad things don't happen to popular girls like Lizzie Lovett, and Hawthorn is convinced she'll turn up at any momentā??which means the time for speculation is now. So Hawthorn comes up with her own theory for Lizzie's disappearance. A theory way too absurd to take seriously...at first. The more Hawthorn talks, the more she believes. And what better way to collect evidence than to immerse herself in Lizzie's life? Like getting a job at the diner where Lizzie worked and hanging out with Lizzie's boyfriend. After all, it's not as if he killed herā??or did he? Told with a unique voice that is both hilarious and heart-wrenching, Hawthorn's quest for proof may uncover the greatest truth is within herself… (more)