Love You Hate You Miss You

June 29, 2009
Amy used to sleep around, party hard and have a wild time with her best friend Julia—until Julia dies in a car accident. Readers meet 16-year-old Amy fresh out of rehab—a recovering alcoholic who is also trying to recover her will to live. Amy feels lost without Julia: she has no real friends and believes her parents not only don't know her but don't want to. The events leading up to Julia's death—which give Amy the impression that she killed her—unfold during Amy's post-rehab sessions with her therapist and her parents. Amy's letters to Julia sit between straight narrative chapters, and throughout Amy marks time by counting the days since Julia's death. The teenager's initial, severe alienation may account for the flat affect in the first half of the story, though as Amy reawakens to the possibility of moving on and life becoming meaningful again, Scott's (Living Dead Girl
) prose becomes layered with emotion, some of it achingly sad. Amy's story stays mainly in guilt, despair and anger throughout, but shifts slightly toward hope as Amy moves through her grief. Ages 12–up.