wow it really has you thinking right up to the end..... I am not going to give anything away .. ( )

16-year-old Cat lives in small-town North Carolina, where most everyone knows everyone else and several of the people she's grown up with are part of the so-called "redneck posse". When her former best friend Patrick is found severely beaten outside the gas station where he works and is left in a coma, most likely because he's gay, she is unsatisfied with the local sheriff's determination that the beating was done by someone passing through and takes it upon herself to do some investigating of her own.

I was fairly impressed by this YA mystery/thriller. With underlying themes of poverty, bullying and drug use, it touched on hot topics of today's youth while not being overly done. For a lesser-known book, I was adequately impressed. ( )

When 16-year old Cat’s (former) best friend Patrick is beaten up and left for dead by someone – likely because he’s gay – Cat doesn’t trust that the small town police are trying very hard to find the culprit(s), so she does some digging of her own. Although, everyone knows everyone, for the past three years, Cat has pretty much shunned everyone (including Patrick), except her brother, who was also friends with Patrick, so it’s not that easy to get info out of people. While she learns some new, surprising things about the people she thought she knew, she is trying to come to grips with something that happened to her at the time she began to ignore everyone when she was 13.

I really liked this. As interesting as it was even from the start, it kept building to the end. I also liked the character from out of town who was introduced. There are some nice (mostly repeated, I think) dark illustrations between chapters, and I liked the way the scene was “set” at the start of the book, via what looks like a newspaper clipping, reporting the attack on Patrick. ( )

Shine is a raw, gritty, emotionally charged story, about a hate crime occurring in small, rural Southern town. Patrick and Cat are best friends until Patrick is "outted" in an embarrassing way in high school and Cat turns her back on him. With his life teetering in the balance, Cat decides that she is going to solve the crime when the local police seems disinterested. I liked the newspaper article beginning, and think Myracle's writing felt right in capturing the emotions of the characters. ( )

Dear National Book Foundation: fuck you, this book is amazing and should win all the awards. No, seriously, did you even read this? Or did you not want all the mature & emotional handling of LGBT/abuse issues through fleshed-out complex characters in your precious finalist list? I almost started crying while reading it, and I'm at my job for goodness' sake. A mediocre book doesn't elicit that kind of response. But hey, who needs challenging lit anymore, right? Nice job, bros. Gag.

Warning: there is a chapter that goes into great detail about a horrific part of the main character's backstory, involving sexual abuse, and it is triggery as hell. If you don't want to be triggered, I'd skim those pages - fast.

I am pretty much going to spend the next couple of months reading the rest of Lauren Myracle's books. I really am. ( )