Wednesday, February 10, 2010

Flash Burnout - L.K. Madigan

Blake's life is going good. He's got a great girlfriend, Shannon, he's got his guy friends to hang out with, and he's got Marissa, a girl he met in photography class last year as a freshman, as a friend too. While doing one of the photography assignments in Old Town, Blake takes a picture of Marissa's mother. Marissa sees the picture the next day, and she heads to Old Town. She finds her mother, brings her back to her grandma's house, and gets her into rehab for her meth addiction. Blake starts to spend more and more time with Marissa and less time with Shannon. One day Blake, Garret (Blake's brother), and Marissa go to the morgue because Blake's dad was talking about a drug overdose victim that came in the night before. Marissa fears its her mother, who's been missing for a few weeks. They break into the morgue, and find out it isn't Marissa's mother. Blake and Marissa spend the whole day together when Blake was supposed to go to Shannon's recital. Blake and Marissa end up having sex, and Blake takes a few pictures of her afterwords. The next day Shannon tells Blake her grandmother died, and she wanted to know why he wasn't answering her calls. After those two days Blake's world falls apart.

I really enjoyed this book. It tackles the question can guys and girls just be friends, which in Blake's case is good for awhile, but then certain urges take over and things fall apart. I also liked that it was told from the guys point of view. Flash Burnout won the 2010 William C Morris YA Debut Award at last months ALA Midwinter conference.

T.B. 2/10/10

No comments: