Jamie Henry’s crazy sister Cate is coming home.

She’s spent the last two years behind bars for starting a fire at a barn that not only killed horses, but it severely harmed one of the local girls. Everyone suspects she did it because she didn’t want that girl to be involved with the boy she had a crush on.

But what worries Jamie isn’t just that she’s coming home (and really, she’s 19, she legally doesn’t need to “come home”). It’s that Cate is coming back to see him.

Because Cate has to set the record straight with her brother.

Stephanie Kuehn’s Complicit is a dark psychological thriller that takes everything she did so well in Charm & Strange and amps it up even more. Be warned that everything from here on out is spoiler.

The first thing you should know about Kuehn’s novel is that you know pretty quickly that things aren’t what they seem. That Jamie, our narrator, isn’t reliable. More than that, you know what he’s said about Cate and her connection to the barn fire might not be true. Perhaps you don’t know how it’s not true, but you know that it’s not. So don’t go into the book thinking that it’s a mystery — it’s not.

Jamie and Cate are adopted. The two of them grew up under Angie and Malcolm’s roof, where they live a pretty nice life. Their adoptive parents are wealthy, and the two of them have had every luxury available to them. The problem is that both of them are damaged from what happened before the adoption. Their mother, who was very young when she had Cate and not much older when she had Jamie, wasn’t the world’s most stable person herself. She was a bit of a drifter, did drugs, never had much money. Even though Jamie and Cate are siblings, they’re not necessarily whole siblings; that’s not known entirely, though. Their mother doesn’t know who either of their fathers are, but the differences in their skin colors suggests that they don’t share the same father. Cate’s darker than Jamie.

They came to be adopted when their mother was killed at home by a gun shot. Angie and Malcolm came to adopt the siblings because they themselves had lost two children in a tragic accident and Cate and Jamie fit well enough into the holes of their deceased kids.

Both Cate and Jamie went to therapy because of the grief and trauma sustained in their early lives. Cate didn’t take to the therapist in the same way Jamie did, and Jamie is upright in talking about how much his life has been impacted by Dr. Waverly. She’s taught him methods of coping with his feelings, ones which can be diagnosed and those which can’t be.

Two years ago, the day things came to light about Cate and the fire at the barn, Jamie began having awful problems with his hands. They stopped working.

Hearing that she was coming home — coming for him — made his hands stop working again.

Complicit is told in the present, as well as through flashbacks to the years prior to Cate’s incarceration. Bit by bit, we’re given flashes into the experiences Jamie had as an adoptee, as well as his experiences learning to make friends and control his emotional and mental states. It’s tough though, especially knowing Cate’s after him. And she’s after him. She knows where he’s at. She knows he’s settling into a new relationship with a girl named Jenny. She knows that he needs to be talked to.

But in every moment where Cate approaches Jamie and where it seems as though she’s finally going to get the chance to tell him what it is she needs to say, he passes out. This is beyond the hands not working. This is not knowing where he is or what he’s doing and waking up unaware of what’s happened except knowing that Cate had been there.

It’s a defense mechanism.

Throughout the book, Jamie leads readers to believe that Cate needs to be avoided. That she’s the embodiment of evil, of terrible decisions, of making poor choices that have forever impacted the family. The truth, though, isn’t at all that simple.

Cate is not the bad seed.

Kuehn deftly weaves Jamie’s reality against the reality of the world around him, and they don’t match up. Those rifts are where the light shines into the story, and in many ways, it’s Cate who digs her fingers into that rift and tears it open. Jamie distracts us though and he does so very well. He recalls something about the night with the barn fire. He was there. He was there to bury the evidence of his sister’s wrongdoing. She’d borrowed his backpack, and when he saw it there that night, he grabbed it and buried it. He didn’t want her to get in trouble and he wanted to do what it was he could to protect her. Except there was no need to protect her.

He was protecting himself.

The fire that night and the fires and burglaries happening around town now had nothing to do with Cate and everything to do with Jamie. The death of their mother years ago had nothing to do with some botched drug deal nor any other theory Jamie cooked up and presented to himself (and by extension, us). It was Jamie.

Complicit is a story about mental illness and about how sick someone can become mentally. It’s about how far other people will go to protect those they love who can’t be helped in the ways that they want to be helped. Kuehn offers us some words for what Jamie’s experiencing, except through the eyes of Jamie, those diagnoses don’t matter. What matters is that as readers, we’re actually experiencing the illness right along with Jamie. We know almost immediately he’s unreliable, and because of his defense mechanisms — his hands not working, his ability to black out and not face the emotions and thoughts in front of him — we’re also left in the dark about some of what’s going on in the present. But rather than being frustrating, it’s a brilliant mimicking of exactly what’s happening at that moment. We are right there with Jamie believing that Cate is a terrible, dark person, and we are right there with Jamie in his desperate search for understanding what happened to his mother, and we are right there with Jamie as he begins falling head over heels for Jenny. As the light breaks through though, we see why we should be worried about being there for him in each of those instances. When Cate reveals herself as not the “crazy” girl we’ve been led to believe she is, suddenly everything falls perfectly into place about the rest of the story. And yes, we do have to worry tremendously about the positive, fulfilling relationship Jamie’s beginning with Jenny.

The threads of this story are woven together seamlessly. We know there’s something going on, and we develop theories about them, but the what of it is never the point of the story. Instead, the point is the experience itself. What does it look like to be so mentally ill you don’t know right from wrong? What does it feel like to be so sick that no amount of help can truly help you? Kuehn forces some really fascinating questions, too, about culpability, about guilt, and about shame in the story too. Why doesn’t Jamie feel bad about the fire? How has he managed to block out shooting and killing his mother (which was accidental, probably, and for which he never took the fall nor the guilt)? What happens when those who love you do everything to protect you?

There are very smart allusions and layers built into the story, as well. Cate is a very smart girl, even though we don’t get to see much of her on page, and what we do see of her is filtered through Jamie’s perception. Complicit will appeal to readers who love psychological thrillers, and it’s fast paced and engaging immediately. It will also appeal to readers who want a novel that forces them to reread, picking up new clues through the second and third readers. What does “The Owl and the Pussycat” really imply here? What about the books Cate has given Jamie? What about the Richard Wright novel? And, perhaps the thing that really cemented this as not just a good novel, but a GREAT one for me, what about that ending? It’s not just a literal taking of the fall, but the burning of that photo which caused the fall. That was what made it clear to me just how sick Jamie was, and it made me want to turn back to page one and see where else those clear signs emerged that I missed the first time through. Without doubt, Kuehn’s expertise in psychology only aids in crafting this story and informs not just Jamie’s worldview, but also ours as readers.

Complicit leaves the reader with big questions, despite offering answers to the questions raised in the story itself. It’s unsettling in many ways, but that discomfort is exactly what readers should walk away with. There’s not a happy ending here, and it’s possible to take aways here are scarier than they are comforting. This book will appeal to readers who want a story that hooks them immediately, and it’ll appeal equally to readers who want a story that is going to challenge them. It’s a sharp, contemporary/realistic thriller that delivers on every level, and Jamie’s voice is memorable, haunting, and authentic.

Kuehn is an author to keep your eye on. She’s only getting better.

Complicit will be available June 24 from St. Martin’s Press. Review copy received from the publisher. 

It’s nearing the end of high school and big changes are brewing in Emi’s life. Her brother’s gone overseas, leaving his apartment to her and her best friend for the summer. Her best friend will be moving to Michigan come fall to go to school, and Emi’s brother’s single expectation for his sister is to “do something epic” in the apartment that summer. To make a memory that will stay with her forever.

She will, but it won’t be in the way she expects.

A little about Emi: she works in film, but she’s not an actress nor a director. Her role is working on the design and arrangement of the set. When the story opens, she’s in the midst of acquiring a couch she thinks will be perfect for a scene in the film she’s working on. She haunts estate sales and flea markets and thrift stores in order to find those pieces that will make a set sing.

And it’s while she’s doing this that bigger things unravel for her. She’s found herself at the estate sale of a former western actor who was well known in his day for his work. While procuring possible items for a set, Emi and best friend Charlotte discover a letter addressed to a woman who lives not too far away. The two of them decide it’s their duty to deliver the letter.

Of course, it’s not going to be that easy. When they arrive at the addressee’s home, they discover that she is no longer alive, either. So they choose to open the letter, and upon further research, Emi and Charlotte realize there’s a lot more to this letter than they thought — and they choose to pursue any and all leads possible to get the letter (and subsequent information about a bank account) to the person it most belongs to: the granddaughter of the deceased western star, Ava.

While it sounds like a mystery, Nina LaCour’s Everything Leads to You is not. It’s a love story. Ava, the girl who the letter eventually gets to, becomes a romantic interest for Emi early on. Emi, who is nursing the wounds of an on again off again relationship with Morgan, wonders whether she’ll ever fall in love with someone who cares about her as much as she cares about them. And it’s something she’ll continue to wonder as she becomes closer to Ava, even as she allows herself to have the feelings she does for Ava without pursuing them.

The world LaCour creates in her novel is worth noting. There’s an appearance of privilege and freedom, but it’s done in a way that feels real and authentic to the story. Emi and Charlotte live in an apartment by themselves, but now that they’re done with high school, it makes sense that they have that freedom. Both girls have a lot of freedom to move around and do what they want to, but both girls also work. Work is a big part of their lives, in a really positive way. They have jobs which seem strange for teenagers to have — especially when Emi manages to land a new gig being the director of design — but for two girls living in Los Angeles, it’s also not a piece of the plot that feels impossible. It’s just the lives they lead.

Ava, on the other hand, lives a very different life than Emi and Charlotte. She comes from a different world, where her life has been a series of chaoses and instability. But what makes her so standout is she not only recognizes and owns that part of her, but she is who she is because she’s able to live her own life in spite of those things. Her best friend Jamal she met because the two of them had to take the same bus to get to work everyday, and that lengthy bus trip allowed them to talk and get to know one another. And while Jamal looks like he plays a minor role in the story, I enjoyed his presence and would have loved even more. Jamal wasn’t easy. He didn’t play around. And he was willing to call people out and force them to dig deeper into who they were.

It’s because of Jamal that we learn Emi is not entirely white. That despite her skin looking white, she’s one-fourth black. This scene, dropped into the book nearly two-thirds of the way through, isn’t splashy nor some kind of big reveal. It’s a fact-laying scene, but it’s woven and incorporated so well that it made me want more from Jamal because clearly, he had a way of getting people to give of themselves. While Ava had made it clear he was a great person, it’s in this scene we see Emi discover it herself.

We know Emi and Ava find one another through this letter, but it’s when Emi is offered a part as a design director in a small, low-budget film that their relationship becomes something more. Ava had always wanted to act, and Emi tells her about the film’s need for a female to play one of the parts. After an audition, the part becomes Ava’s, and the two of them work together closely as Ava learns her lines and as Emi works on designing the look of the scenes — which leads her to offering the apartment she’s living in as one of the apartments for the film.

One of the most interesting aspects of the book was how Emi’s need to solve the mysteries of Ava’s life tied into her role in putting together films. Emi, as a person who assists in designing sets, was reluctant to listen to those who told her some of her ideas wouldn’t work well in the particular scenes being filmed. She thought her ideas were perfect, and she becomes upset when those around her prove their vision to be more correct than hers. She’s less happy being a spectator than she is being the person who gets to direct the entire look and feel. So when Emi realizes she can’t solve the issues of Ava’s life, that she has to accept the fact that Ava’s challenges and means of resolving her problems fall squarely into the hands of Ava and not her, she has a hard time accepting this role. It’s not that she’s a control freak; it’s that it comes hard for her to accept that not every problem and not every puzzle is one she can nor should attempt to solve all on her own. Despite the independence and freedom she has in her life, she can’t expect the same from those around her. Things do and will come up that force her to see that not everything can nor should be handed to her. She sometimes has to step back from directing and sit back to be a spectator in order to to see an entire scene come alive.

While I didn’t love the way that everything relating to Ava’s discovery came as easily as it did — even the dead ends were resolved a little too quickly and cleanly for me — I loved the way that she and Emi became girlfriends. Ava offered Emi more than one opportunity to act upon her feelings, but it wasn’t immediate. Emi was more reluctant, more put off because of her own past relationships, than Ava was, but it was ultimately Ava who showed her it was okay to pursue those feelings.

That epic summer adventure in Emi’s brother’s apartment was, of course, Emi falling in love.

LaCour weaves in the set design metaphor quite nicely. The actors in any film are important, but as Emi explains early on, what people tend to overlook when watching a film, are the ways that the spaces the actors play in are created, designed, and used to enhance their story lines. Those interiors are things that are present, that are thought about, that are developed and redeveloped, in a way that’s not always seen on the screen, despite how hugely important they are in the film and to the characters playing in those spaces.

The interior, of course, is love and how it’s created and recreated, how it’s fashioned and refashioned, how it’s carefully constructed and then reconstructed. The actors matter, but they only matter as much as the thing holding them together. In this case, it doesn’t matter at all that it’s one girl falling in love with another girl. What matters is that it’s something holding them together.

Everything Leads to You is a love story, with a full cast of well-rendered characters and a setting that comes alive. This one will especially appeal to older YA readers and those who never saw — or don’t see right now — high school as the kind of thing they’re invested in too deeply. Readers who want a story with heart will want to pick this up, as will those readers who are seeking lesbian romance stories and finding that the bulk of them are less focused on the love and more focused on what that love might look like to others. Here, those cameras aren’t even part of the story.

Everything Leads to You will be available May 15. Review copy received from the publisher.

I’m in the midst of a reading slump. It’s not surprising me or frustrating me much, though, because I know it’s related to having finished a year of non-stop reading, and I know it’s also related to what happens when I find myself wanting to blog and write a lot more. Sometimes, my energy can only go so far, and when I’ve put in hours of writing, reading isn’t always the most appealing to me after.

That said, I have gotten a few reads in recently, and I’ve been rearranging my to-read pile so I can get excited again when the time comes. Here’s a look at two books I read recently that didn’t wow me but I also didn’t dislike entirely, which I guess makes this post two “eh, they’re okay” reviews. 

Grasshopper Jungle by Andrew Smith — available now

I didn’t love this book. In fact, I’m not sure I enjoyed the reading experience at all. But I kept reading it and finished it because it’s kind of like abstract art: you look at it to appreciate how it comes together but that doesn’t mean you have to appreciate it beyond the way it was constructed. There’s a story about bisexuality here, and it’s woven into a story about the end of the world, about world history, about local history, and about family history. There are also giant grasshoppers and there is non-stop talk from Austin about how horny he is and how everything turns him on.

Is it well-written? Yes. Is it weird and different? Yes.

The thing is, beyond the fact this story tackles so much — and it does tackle some hugely important issues — I didn’t necessarily think it was all that risky or interesting. Austin being a boy allowed him to do and say and act upon a lot of things that, were Austin a female character, would have never happened and would have been a lot more risky and interesting to me as a reader. That’s not to undermine the really powerful story of sexuality here. But I couldn’t help thinking about the fact no female character could have Austin’s story, either. A girl who would dare talk about her physical needs this much wouldn’t be embraced in the same way Austin is. Perhaps this was an unfair thought to keep having, but I also don’t think it’s a thought unmerited by the story itself. A lot of what Austin does and says and observes about the females in this book made me uncomfortable. They were true to his voice, but the fact there is not one girl in the story who isn’t either a middle age woman on drugs to make her happy OR an object of sexual fascination to him left me feeling a little cold and tired. Not to mention she had no agency herself. I know it’s Austin’s perspective and how skewed that is, but I really wanted more of Shann than I got. 

There were also times when author voice insert became too obvious for me. Austin was smart and funny, but I had a hard time buying Austin would so remove himself from his situation to make observations that certain names were “very Iowa.” That was author humor over character humor and those moments pulled me out of the story a bit.

The Truth About Alice by Jennifer Mathieu — available June 3

This review contains spoilers, and I know that reviewing this early out isn’t always the most helpful thing in the world. But again, reading slump, and I picked this one up because it was a shorter read. Feel free to skip this and come back since it’ll spoil much of the book.

This is a book about how Alice was branded a slut because a few nasty people in small town Healy, Texas decided to spread rumors to save themselves and their own reputation. It’s all done without giving Alice a voice, which is effective in being a he said-she said story. But it’s all telling with little showing. Yes, you see cruelty (like when Kelsie, Alice’s former best friend, chooses to sharpie the walls of a bathroom stall calling Alice a variety of names), but you are also told repeatedly things that would be better serviced by stronger writing, more development of characters, and deeper investment in the story in and of itself. Because in every chapter, rather than seeing how Healy was a small town, we were reminded that Healy was a small town. You could walk from x place to y place. Healy was a small town. This person knew this person. While fine and great, actually reading it on the page, with some detail, would have actually shown the reader this sufficiently enough not to need to be reminded. And I think part of the dependence upon that was because there wasn’t a whole lot of story here to be told. 

Is this effective in showing how awful people are? Absolutely. It does to the reader pretty much what happened to Alice. She has no voice and no control, and we as readers see no voice and have no control over what happens. 

But why do I CARE about Alice? I do because other people are awful and that’s it. Because Kurt, the nerdy boy who wants to get close to Alice because of a long-time crush, is the only okay character in the story. But because his interest in her is romantic, and unabashedly so, I’m still not keen on his motivations or his own character. In the end, when the revelation is that Alice kept seeing him for tutoring and forgave him for keeping a secret from her emerges, we’re supposed to buy that this is meant to be a new, fresh friendship for her. But I don’t buy it: Kurt was in it from the start because of romantic feelings. So as much as it looks like it’s FRIENDSHIP in the end, Alice’s lack of voice throughout and Kurt’s lack of voice following her one opportunity to talk, I still see it as a boy saving a girl in a way that’s cast as romantic. It’s a trope that appears again and again, and it’s not fresh here.

Also, the abortion storyline with Alice’s former best friend didn’t work for me. It actually painted Alice in a poor light, since she is the reason Kelsie tells us she decided to sleep with that boy one time and wound up pregnant in that one sexual encounter. But again — Alice’s lack of voice lets this happen. There was also a weird message there with the pregnancy/abortion storyline and how it butts up against Kelsie’s mother’s devotion to faith.

There are better bullying books. There are better books about girls shamed for their sexuality. There are better books about small towns and rumors. At times the writing feels a little too adult-trying-to-write-teens and at times when the writing is just…Kurt uses the phrase “rear end” to describe a part of Alice’s body which even for someone as nerdy and intelligent as he tells us he is, I have a hard time thinking a 16 or 17 year old boy with a raging crush on her would say.

Had Alice had a voice in this book, it would have been more compelling, with more depth, and probably could have gone from an okay read to a great one. But in many ways, as much as it’s often smart to have the reader’s experience mirror Alice’s, it also feels a little manipulative and co-opts her story here. 

Review copies received from the publisher. 

Brighton is the girl everybody likes, which is good because she strives to be liked. To be nice. Except today she’s not feeling quite like the “nice” girl she’s always been — her heart aches the day before the anniversary of her father’s death and the memorial that her family will be having.

Jonah is the new boy in school this year, but he’s not bothered trying to fit in. It’s senior year, and he’s feeling completely out of place in Cross Pointe. He’s not rich like these kids, and he’s just not one of them. He doesn’t have the spirit, and since he gave up baseball, he’s just focused on getting out as fast as possible. Of course, there’s much more to him than that —  his mom has recently remarried, his father moved away, and he’s adjusting to living apart from his girlfriend and long-time friend Carly. And tonight, well, he and Carly might not have a relationship anymore.

Brighton wants nothing more than for Jonah to like her. Jonah wants nothing to do with this and nothing to do with Brighton, and Brighton cannot figure out what it is she’s done to upset him. And even though Brighton sounds like she’s in this for the reason of wanting to be liked, it’s more than that: she wants something from Jonah and she’s going to go after it however she can. 

No, it’s not a relationship. He’s standing between her and achieving the goal of having everyone at school complete in a service activity for the year. If she does that, she’ll achieve what her father did before her. And she’ll feel like she’s really done something . . . nice. 

Over the course of one day, Brighton and Jonah’s worlds will continue to collide in Tiffany Schmidt’s Bright Before Sunrise. First on purpose, then by accident, then on purpose. Each of these instances happens authentically and naturally. And over the course of that night, Brighton and Jonah will discover why they are who they are to one another, as well as why this may or may not matter. 

Schmidt’s sophomore novel is a knock-out. This is a story about what it means to play into the roles that you believe you should fit into, whether you need to or not. Brighton falls into the trap of believing she always needs to be nice and always needs to be liked. Jonah believes he has to shut out all of the things from his present life and live in the past of who he once was, even though he’s also shut out so many of the things in his past that made him who he is. Together, the two of them will challenge each other to dig into those roles they’re playing and figure out why it is they’re playing them. Why can’t they just be who they are, rather than be somebody they think they need to be? 

This isn’t a romance. At least not an initially. There’s nothing instant about their connection, and frankly, there’s not necessarily a connection that happens between Brighton and Jonah. In the very end, though, Brighton lets down her guard after telling Jonah she’s never taken a chance on something — and she chooses to take that chance on him. Will they end up being together for the long term? Or will this be a short term experience for the two of them? There’s nothing clear cut about the end except that it’s precisely what Brighton does because of how Jonah convinces her it’s something she should consider doing once in a while: taking a chance. 

Bright Before Sunrise is a story about examining those roles you choose to play and the reasons you may be playing them. Is it the world around you? Is it your past? Can you shake them off, cast them a middle finger, and then be your true, authentic self? Can all of this happen in one night? What if the right person is begging you to strip down to your barest self? This is much more of a character-driven story than it is an action- or plot- driven one, and both Brighton and Jonah are at times tough to like. But that’s what makes them compelling and what pushes the story forward: despite maybe not being the most likable characters (Brighton, I suspect, will endure this label far more than Jonah will by most readers, much in part to her being a female who strives to be liked), it’s hard not to care about what it is that drives them both. Brighton’s not just mourning, but she’s also desperately seeking approval. Why does she need that? What validation does it give her? Jonah, new in school and okay with just skirting by, has not just a tough family situation to contend with, but it’s clear that he’s also not used to fitting into the social world of the kids in his new school. Schmidt does a good job giving a glimpse into some realistic socioeconomic issues here in a way that never feels like a message nor does it feel like Jonah’s a stereotypical “poor kid” now in a “rich kid” school. 

The writing is strong, the story moves quickly, and the setting and dialog ring true. It’s funny in parts, and there’s great romantic tension in parts. There are no world-changing events that happen; the characters bring that with them to the story already. Instead, it’s the dissecting of those world-changing events of the past that allow the characters to see one another as they really are — and that allows them to see themselves as who they really are. It’s a story that takes place in one night and one night only, but the revelations from that night have long-lasting ripples. It is hard not to pull for both these characters and what it is they may or may not have with one another. 

The tagline to Bright Before Sunrise is “One night can change how you see the world. One night can change how you see yourself,” and it’s perfectly fitting. If you didn’t know, there’s been a really enjoyable blog series for Schmidt’s novel going on over on Tumblr, where authors and bloggers have all shared the one night that changed their lives. If you’re curious, you can read mine here. There’s a perfect opportunity to talk the book with that topic, since everyone has one night that they can think of that changed their lives or the way they see themselves — which is precisely what the book is about.  

In many ways this book is reminiscent of Lauren Myracle’s The Infinite Moment of Us, where Wren challenges her “good girl”/”nice girl” life by choosing to follow the plans she wants for herself, rather than those expected of her. It’s also a little reminiscent of David Levithan and Rachel Cohn’s Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist. Schmidt’s novel will certainly appeal to readers who like contemporary realistic YA that feels real. This lands more on the “actual reality” rather than “perceived reality” side of the scale, if there is such a thing. Readers who like romance in their stories should certainly pick this up, as should those readers who love a book that’s set in a tight time frame. But again: while there is romance in this book, it’s not a cut-and-dry romance, and I emphasize that because what this book is really about is how we challenge ourselves to see ourselves and our lives through different lights — and how we can choose to make things different. 

Bright Before Sunrise will be available tomorrow. Review copy  received from the author, with whom I have a relationship.