NY: Scholastic, 2017.
I read a fair number of YA novels of the “teen romance” sort (I’ll read almost anything if it’s well-written) and there are certain features and themes that are common to most of them. Flanagan, whose first novel I believe this is, has taken a rather different path in her story, and it’s quite an original and empathic one.
Jess Mayfield is a skinny sixteen-year-old semi-goth (and a very talented artist) living in a tiny town in the Yorkshire dales. Her best friend, Eden Holby, is a completely different sort of person — beautiful, smart, filled with confidence, and from a relatively wealthy family — but the two are almost closer than sisters anyway. Then Eden’s family is hit by a sudden, very traumatic tragedy, and Jess and Liam Caffrey, Eden’s boyfriend, spend the summer trying to help their friend recover. Eden had done the same for Jess the previous year, when Jess experienced her own intense trauma of a very different sort, so she knows what mentally shattering pain is like. But Eden is convinced this disaster is all her fault — and she may even be right. And then, one night, Eden goes missing. Has she fallen off the deep end psychologically? Is there going to be a third tragedy? The only thing Jess can think of is to retrace their experiences of the previous few months, to try to find her friend before it’s too late.
The tension is considerable and there’s no guarantee of a happy ending, so the reader will become closely invested in the story as the action progresses. There’s a love story in here, too, but it’s not the focus. The real theme is the nature of, and importance of, deep friendship. And Flanagan does an excellent job of telling us why that is. This is one I’ll be recommending to my discriminating grandkids.
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