Perhaps you’ve noticed my love affair with Jennifer McMahon? When you read three books by someone in a week, it becomes obvious that you are a little obsessed. Then comes the fall, the moment you realize that you have read all their books and the there is no more to read. Ironically, that’s sorta what this book was like. Hard, fast love followed by the realization that your love story isn’t forever.
Maggie has become a outcast by her own free will. After a car accident that killed her mom, she isn’t into the friends and life she had before. Instead, she befriends the strange new girl, Dahlia. Their odd friendship quickly grows into something more as Maggie realizes her feelings run deeper.
This is the typical figuring out your into chicks story, but done in a very non-typical way. It keeps to McMahon’s usual dreamlike feel, but lacks the sinister undertones of her other books. It also isn’t quite as good as the other books, but it’s still loads better than most books.
Maggie’s feelings for Dahlia grow slowly through the first part of the book and as a lesbian, it all seems way familiar. Maybe all of us have a thing for the bad girl? Maybe it’s just that the bad girls in high school were better at giving off the feeling that *maybe* they could be into girls as well. Either way, I was smack dab back in my teenage brain reading this book.
The relationship between the girls is shorter than I would have liked, but again that puts you right in Maggie’s head because it’s shorter than she would like too. This book lacks most of the tragedy and heartache that fill way too many coming out books, and I appreciated that.
Aside from the main girls, the supporting cast in an interesting mix of damaged people who seem to breath full lives because of how damaged they are. The small period of time you visit in this book is a mess,but you believe every minute of it.
Great book, definitely more YA than not. Very worth a read.