I’m finding the YA genre an extremely worthwhile addition to current literary offerings. Although these books tend to be light on eroticism and heavy on gutter language and/or violence, it is my perception that they deal honestly with the real traumas present-day young people experience.
“A Short History of the Girl Next Door” by Jared Reck has our narrator-protagonist Matthew suddenly coming to the realization that his best friend and almost-sister Tabby is dating Liam, a senior and star basketball player in their high school. It is immediately obvious that Matt also loves Tabby as more than a friend, but is helpless to deal with the impact of this shift in the emotional landscape. What Matt goes through from this point on, and the extremely wise and sensitive intervention of his grandfather when the inevitable crises occur, elevate this novel from the “good story” to the “superlative narrative” level. Highly recommended, despite the somewhat disturbing ongoing use of some of the less pleasant obscenities from which, it seems, one cannot escape anywhere except on prime-time TV, where frequent bleeping may replace what we all know is being said.
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