A Reading Vocation

This is one of those books that you might not like if you aren't as comfortable with ambiguous endings as I am. There was a moment, when I looked at the progress bar on the bottom of my Kindle, and thought, "How can I be THAT close to the end? How can this be resolved in that amount of space?"

The book deals with a very complicated, not easily resolved situation in a fairly short span of pages. It is written in first and second-person, as a sort of letter from Nell to her older sister, Layla, explaining what she experiences when she realizes the rumors about Layla having an affair with a teacher at school are true. Despite the subject matter, this is not a salacious book, nor does the second-person narration feel gimmicky. Instead, it presents a painfully accurate picture of a teen navigating the tension between being true to her sister and being true to her own sense of what's right and wrong; of that awkward place when the person you've always looked up to becomes the person you long to save; and most of all, how devastating it is to begin to lose something you thought would always be there.

The characterizations of Nell and Layla, as well as the other teens in the book, feel spot-on. A fair amount of threads are left only loosely tied at the end, but it left me feeling satisfied even as I experienced that sweet yearning for more that only a truly excellent book can inspire.