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In her recent novel And Don’t Look Back, Rebecca Barrow has penned a psychological thriller with plot twists that parallel the intensity of a Criminal Minds drama. As the central character in this tale, Barrow creates Harlow Ford, who has spent her life on the run, moving to a new location whenever something triggers her mom’s paranoia. As a result, Harlow has had to reinvent, build, and dismantle several identities. Given this reality, the moments during which Harlow feels most at home are those moments spent with her mom in the car, “wherever they’ve been in the rearview mirror, whoever they’ve been fading away likeRead More →

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Anyone wishing for a Halloween thriller will likely find it in The Last Girls Standing by Jennifer Dugan. With this horror story, Dugan creates Charlene Addison Barnes, aka Cherry, and Sloan Thomas, two survivors of a mass murder at Camp Money Springs where they had taken summer jobs as camp counsellors. Able to diffuse tension with a single sentence, Cherry survives the killing spree of a “save the Earth” cult with her memory intact. However, like a rabbit in a snare, Sloan is caught in a time loop in her head. Although Sloan wants to study social work and save the world, her perfect plansRead More →

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E. Lockhart pens a haunting story in Family of Liars. She not only shares how unearned privilege can lead to “terrible things on top of terrible things” but how those with resources often get a pass: “They assume that girls like us—educated girls from a ‘good family’—they assume we are telling the truth. We get the benefit of the doubt, the assumption of innocence, conferred by our family name” (277). Tucked in the telling, though, Lockhart also shares how messy and miserable that “pretending, lying, trying to have a good time” (219) can become. Because Carrie Sinclair is depressed and suffering, dealing with issues ofRead More →

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Dark Room Etiquette by Robin Roe should be required reading for any student of psychology. Set in Texas, this is a powerful book about the aftermath of a traumatic event and illustrates how the human mind is a total mystery. Roe tells the story of two years in the life of Sayers Wayte (Saye), a sixteen-year-old who turns eighteen in the course of the novel. As the story opens, Saye is basking in his status as a junior eligible for Homecoming Court at Laurel High School, as a popular young man with friends and a girlfriend, and as a member of the upper class whoseRead More →

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Sixteen-year-old Calliope Knowles is a self-described bitch, but that word hardly describes her true self, a traumatized young woman who is a ward of the state of Illinois and a clinically diagnosed graphomaniac.   Graphomania is a compulsion to write; Callie writes “for the same reason most of us breathe” (3).  Although she feels like a carnival side show and hates being a slave to the words in her head, the words motivate her to remember. Ever since her father disappeared, Callie has been compelled to write.  Although the authorities don’t believe she killed her father, they do think she knows something about his disappearance andRead More →

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That Jennifer Lynn Barnes has advanced degrees in psychology, psychiatry, and cognitive science is obvious in her new book, The Naturals, a book sure to appeal to readers like me who enjoy television programs like Criminal Minds and Cold Case. The book stars seventeen-year-old Cassie Hobbes, who describes herself as odd: “odd-looking, oddly quite, always the odd one out” (17).  While “other kids spent their preschool years singing their way through the ABC’s” (9), Cassie was learning a different alphabet: the BPE’s, tricks of her psychic mother’s trade: behavior, personality, environment.  When her mother is murdered, Cassie ends up in Colorado with her loud extendedRead More →

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At the core of its plot, Erased by Jennifer Rush features psychological and genetic engineering that erases important memories and plants false ones in the void.  Four of the experimental group teens manage to escape the Branch lab.  Anna, unable to let go of the past, is on the run with loyal and noble Sam, the irritatingly adorable Cas, and Nick, “a shark masquerading as a panther” (19).  The Branch has been using biotechnology to turn teens into weaponry, and the four have received genetic alterations and programming to turn them into a team of assassins, with Anna as the leader. Hunted by the Branch,Read More →