The night Becca graduated high school, she and her boyfriend have sex in the back of his car to celebrate. Except, it’s not a celebration when he breaks her heart right there by telling her it’s over. They’re through.

It’s the same night the dead body of a teen girl shows up along the side of the road, rag dolled and broken in the most unnatural of ways.

When Becca hears about the body, her world shatters a little more. She’d always been eager to leave her small town, always ready for a new adventure, but now she’s scared to leave. What’s always been a safe place now feels unsafe, and if she feels that way here, she’s worried how she’ll feel when she’s hundreds of miles away.

With the summer still ahead of her, Becca has a lot of time on her hands to figure out who she is, what her relationship with her (ex)-boyfriend is, and where she wants to go when the season ends. Oh, and there’s also the question of who the dead girl is, how she got there, and how or why she relates to Becca herself.

Amelia Anne is Dead and Gone is Kat Rosenfield’s debut and it is a knock out. This book is dark, it’s twisted, and has an incredibly satisfying pay off in the end. Not to mention that it has some of the most lush writing I’ve experienced since Nova Ren Suma’s Imaginary Girls — but more on that later.

The story alternates from Becca’s voice to that of Amelia’s, with Becca narrating forward and Amelia narrating almost backward; since Amelia is dead, we start from the tipping point of her life and watch as events line up that ultimately lead to her end. The two girls share pretty similar stories, and this becomes obvious almost immediately. There’s an age difference between them, as Becca’s just graduated high school and standing at the edge of making a decision of which direction she should go now, while Amelia has finished college and is headed straight for the dream she has for herself. In both cases, the girls have a boy who is a heavy part of their lives.

There is a major difference in their stories though, and that’s perception of control.

While I found myself interested in Amelia’s story, I really fell into Becca’s world. The opening scene is raw and painful — as soon as she’s given herself to her boyfriend James in the most intimate of ways (yes, possible in a car in the middle of no where), he leaves her there naked and broken. And while it’s consensual, what he did to her emotionally and psychologically equates to rape. This is an important plot point, and it’s one that’ll emerge again and again throughout the story in different, and maybe varied and twisted, ways. Becca started dating James roughly a year ago, and it was a bit reluctant. They’re from completely different worlds and backgrounds; Becca’s always been on a scholarly path, always been prepared to leave her small town behind and achieve bigger things at university in a big city. James, on the other hand, isn’t. He’s a townie, never cared about school. Though he’s poised as a typical bad boy, he’s not, and that’s what draws Becca to him. Except she worries by dating him she’s going to break his heart when the time comes for her to leave town. But more than that, she worries by dating him, she’ll give up her own dreams of leaving and choose instead to stay behind with him.

The tension between Becca’s dreams and her reality is believable. We’re immediately thrown into a moment where a decision was made for her, without any input on her part. When the body is found and the town is thrown for a loop over who this is, Becca latches onto solving the mystery. She offers insight into who lives in this small and eerie town, and she points her finger directly at a boy she’s convinced has had a hand in killing Amelia. In the mean time, as much as Becca and James have ended their relationship, they’re still spending time together, and Becca relives their relationships regularly, trying to find the point when things changed. When she changed from being the forward-driven girl to the kind of girl who wanted to give herself fully to a boy and a relationship.

Because I don’t want to ruin the mystery, all I can really add about Amelia and Becca’s criss-crossing story lines is that Amelia’s world is the world Becca deserves, and what Becca’s struggling with is precisely what Amelia figures out. Moreover, everything we’re led to believe about one of the characters ends up changing. Rosenfield does a great job of giving readers a big twist in the story, and while it was something I’d suspected from the beginning, I was ultimately satisfied (and still surprised, not because I “got” it but because it ended up playing out how I hoped it would).

Amelia Anne is Dead and Gone offers not only a compelling plot with fully-developed characters, but it’s well-written. The language and description doesn’t take a back seat here. Instead, we’re treated to a small town that feels real and is very visual. The secondary characters — primarily townies, the kinds of people who live their entire lives in these places — don’t feel like stereotypes, even when Becca describes them that way. They’re dynamic, and this comes across through the moments of revealing the mystery of dead Amelia.

Rosenfield’s writing reminded me a lot of Nova Ren Suma’s. It’s literary without being pretentious and without sacrificing plot. More than that, this story had some chillingly similar elements to Imaginary Girls, particularly when it came to setting. When you read a lot of books, it’s always interesting to see where stories are in (unintentional) conversations with one another. While Rosenfield’s story is wholly contemporary, there were a lot of moments when the two stories had a lot of cross overs with one another, and I could so see Chloe in a similar position as Becca and Ruby in the same position as Amelia. Fans of Suma’s book will no doubt want to pick this one up.

I read the bulk of Amelia Anne is Dead and Gone in one sitting, and it’s the kind of book I see myself picking up again to revisit. It’s ultimately a book about life choices and about life and death, as well as how life choices can impact whether you’re living or you’re dying. While there is a lot of focus on romantic relationships and how those impact choice-making, Rosenfield never lays down a message about them. They’re neither good things nor bad things but things in and of themselves and they impact an individual’s choices. Moreover, the book successfully twists reader perceptions when it comes to characters, too: there aren’t clear cut villains or victims (aside from Amelia) but rather, everyone in the story comes to be who they are through the choices they make. This is the kind of book that’ll speak to readers who feel they’re stuck somewhere or stuck in something they can’t move forward from and it’ll appeal to readers who enjoy a good mystery, too. I think it’ll end up being a favorite of 2012 and one that sticks with me for quite a while.

Review copy received from the publisher. Amelia Anne is Dead and Gone will be available July 5.

Travis has leave time from the Marines and he’s heading home to Ft. Myers, Florida to his family. But when he returns, he’s not exactly happy. Not exactly thrilled to enter back into his former life. First, his parents aren’t doing so hot — they’re on the brink of divorce and the tension between his mom and dad is palpable. Second, he knows he’s going to have to deal with his ex-girlfriend Paige who dumped him via letter. And not only did she dump him, she left him for his brother. On top of that, Travis keeps having nightmares about his best friend being killed and they haunt him so much he can’t sleep. So much he sees Charlie all over the place.

Oh, and then there’s Harper. Travis runs into her at a party, where she tells him she does not like him. Hasn’t since middle school, when he spread a rumor about her promiscuity and trashed her reputation. But he apologizes, and in that apology, Travis finds himself attracted to her. He knows Harper is the kind of girl he needs right now.

Trish Doller’s Something Like Normal is an emotional read and one that hits every single note right. Travis is a fully-fleshed and authentic male narrator who is grappling with not only the challenges of the home life he returns to, but also with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). He’s kept the PTSD private and quiet because he believes it’s something that will just go away. Except it only continues to get worse during his time at home. There are so many stresses in Travis’s life: he’s struggling with how to be a support system to his mother when she and his father argue, and he’s finding himself having a difficult time figuring out what his relationship to his father is. When he was younger, his dad pushed him to be a football player like he had been, and while Travis played along living his father’s dream for a while, he eventually put his foot down and said no more. That’s why he decided to enlist in the Marines in the first place. It was his way of sending a middle finger to his father and his father’s dreams.

There’s also tension between Travis and his brother Ryan. While Travis is in Afghanistan, his girlfriend Paige has been sleeping with Ryan. She dumps him (the classy move, of course) and tells him she’s leaving him for his brother. Ryan sees it as no big deal, and while Travis acts like he’s stronger than some girl’s behavior, he’s really not. We see this when he and Paige confront one another upon his return, and they become intimate again. But rather than make Travis feel better or worse, it sort of leaves him all together empty. It won’t be the only time they get together when he’s back either; when Travis and Harper are seeing one another, he sleeps with Paige again.

The relationship between Travis and Harper is one of my favorite aspects of the story. I’m not a huge romantic and I find often those story lines come off as forced or as underdeveloped in YA novels, but Doller gets it right here. Travis and Harper grow close over the course of his time back at home, and rather than experiencing instant chemistry, the beginning of their relationship is extremely tentative, careful, and cautious. Travis hurt Harper pretty bad in the past, and even though he’s apologized and hasn’t even thought about it for years, she’s nervous to spend time with him. She’s nervous to forgive him completely, too, since she has to protect herself. At the beginning, their relationship is a friendship, and it is the sort of thing Travis needs in his life so badly. He needs that person to turn to and talk with, and she offers him that space. It’s safe to him and, as she learns, it’s safe for her too. While things grow increasingly tense at home and with his PTSD, she’s a solid place for him. Then when he finds out the parents of his friend Charlie — the one killed in Afghanistan and the one who has been haunting him regularly — are hosting a memorial service for him and have asked him to speak at it, Travis knows he can’t go alone. He asks Harper, and she agrees and it’s in those moments where we see the true depths of their relationship. Except, this trip is not just about putting his best friend to rest. It’s putting his mind to rest over the fact he slept with Paige and while he and Harper aren’t anything official, the guilt he has about returning to his ex eats him up.

Travis and Harper have a very healthy relationship, and while she’s understandably angry with Travis when he confesses what he’s done, she also realizes at that point just what she is to him and what he is to her. She seethes, and it’s understandable. But when Travis needs her after the service, when he’s unable to keep himself together alone anymore, she is there for him. It’s in this moment one of my favorite scenes happens, and one that made my heart explode a tiny bit because it was so well-done, so thoughtful, and so realistic — and it’s a spoiler, so drop down to the next paragraph if you don’t want it. While Travis and Harper have been together, they have not been at all intimate with one another, which is part of why their relationship works so well. It’s based on a real emotional connection and understanding of one another’s needs — what  Travis needs after a major PTSD experience is Harper’s support and what Harper needs is to give that to him.

That’s a lot of explanation for why Travis was a knock out character, but it amounts to this: he’s not portrayed as a hero in this story. He’s flawed, he makes mistakes, and he has to learn how to deal with the consequences. He’s got to figure out his role as a son, as a brother, as a friend, and as a boyfriend. It’s not easy, and he’s not given short cuts. He has to work through. Being a Marine doesn’t mean anything more than it has to here, and I think that in and of itself is what makes Travis realistic.

I haven’t touched on the PTSD stuff too much because, as integral as it is to the plot, it’s not the entire story. However, it is addressed near the end of the book in an honest manner that was not only fitting with Travis’s character, but fitting with how I think anyone who is as young as Travis would deal with it. First with ignoring, with repressing, with hiding it, with trying to face it, with hiding it again, and then finally with addressing it through therapy. It’s not at all overly sentimental nor cliche in how it’s presented or dealt with.

There are a lot of plot lines in the book, and while I remained nervous about the resolution of a few of them, Doller successfully ties each of them up by the end of the book. That’s not to say they’re all solved nor are they all closed cases, but each of them is addressed as Travis would address them. While that in and of itself isn’t necessarily the noteworthy thing, what is noteworthy is that this is a relatively short novel — it’s just over 200 pages. It’s tightly written, and there aren’t wasted passages or scenes. Each contributes directly to the execution of the story and the development of the characters. There’s no dwelling. We know how things play out with his parents and we learn how he figures out the best way to approach Paige and Ryan in his life. We also get to see just what happens with Charlie, too.

Something Like Normal will have appeal for both male and female readers, despite the cover that appeals much more heavily to female readers (which is a real shame). Travis is the kind of guy male readers will relate to. He wants to take care of business. His dialog is authentic, his relationships believable, and his struggles are the kinds of things teens deal with regularly. The family and romantic dynamics work without becoming too complicated, overwritten, or just too much. I can see people who loved Dana Reinhardt’s The Things a Brother Knows finding this a great next title — in fact, I can see fans of any of Reinhardt’s titles finding this to be similar in style. While I was reading, though, I couldn’t help think how much Travis reminded me of Nick from CK Kelly Martin’s I Know It’s Over and I think fans of Martin’s books will find Doller writes in a very similar manner. Add this one to your great contemporary stories with great male voices list, as well as your lists about military fiction, as it addresses the issues of the life of a Marine beyond the in-world. Something Like Normal will, without doubt, find itself on my favorites list for 2012 and well beyond. It is an impressive debut, and if you want to know the truth: it made me cry more than once.

Review copy received from the publisher. Something Like Normal comes out today.