Shine

When her best friend falls victim to a vicious hate crime, sixteen-year-old Cat sets out to discover the culprits in her small North Carolina town. |||This book is sold in the US by Sony Electronics Inc.

Cat has been distant from childhood best friend Patrick for three years (she began to "ignore the whole world" after an older friend of her brother's molested her). Even so, when a horrific and possible hate crime leaves openly gay Patrick comatose, she decides to "look straight into the ugliness and find out who hurt him." She grows suspicious of her brother's friends, "the redneck posse," who were with Patrick the night of his attack-especially as she learns they are keeping dangerous secrets, including dealing and using meth. Myracle (Bliss) paints the desperate poverty and bitter divisions within Cat's mountain community well, with memorable details like a friend coloring the duct tape patches on her couch to match the fabric or a meth cooker's bathtub filled with funnels and coffee filters. These details and the thick mystery that Cat unfurls will keep readers engaged-and suspecting several characters, as Cat does. The final faceoff strains believability and the conclusion is a tad neat, but readers will find themselves thinking about Cat's complicated rural community long after the mystery has been solved. Ages 14-up. (May) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

• Published by

  Amulet Books

• Publish Date

  May 01, 2011 

• Print ISBN

  0810984172

• eBook ISBN

  9781613121450

• Imprint

  Amulet Books

• Filesize

  3.91 MB

• Number of Print Pages*

  376

* Number of eBook pages may differ. Click here for more information.