Shannon Costello

This Young Adult book is one of the few high school YA books I have read.  I enjoyed the book, but I’m glad to spend most of my time with the less edgy middle school stuff.

I thought the book was quite good.  The story drew me in and the plot was well-constructed, meaning that I was surprised a few times but on looking back I could see the well-laid clues to the various plot twists.  To say I enjoyed the book is almost an understatement.  It is 471 pages long and I pretty much read it in one sitting (that’s a YA 471, so don’t be too impressed), so absorbed in the book that I couldn’t pay any attention to my worsening headache (which got pretty severe- I felt kind of nauseous).

The villain was quite villainous, which I guess is a good way for a villain to be.  It was a bit understated, but he was into slowly cutting up little animals while they were still alive and also enjoyed abusing young girls.  (On top of that he had a magical gift so that anyone who heard about him believed him to be wonderful- really rather horrifying.)

As middle school teachers, we don’t touch these kinds of issues.  Our students are old enough to know about controversial topics, but they are routinely and scrupulously avoided (and a good thing, too).  My impression is that that is not the case in high school.  And I know college is even worse- I have gotten offended as an adult college student…why do people assume that just because a person is 18 he or she is cleared to discuss, well, the things that get discussed there…?  But I digress.

The protagonist is opposed to the idea of marriage or children, enough so that she is upset when she falls in love.  The guy suggests that they can be together (euphemistically speaking) without getting married.  And they do, in much more detail than Lori Wick, though not nearly up to the standards of a secular romance novel (of which standards I have only dark hints).

I really liked the book Jackaroo when I was a kid, but my father stopped me from reading it (after I’d already read it a few times) because the two main characters “slept on one pallet, as husband and wife”- only they weren’t married.  I think of myself as having survived reading that novel without much damage, but on the other hand, I bet my quote is very accurate. What does it mean that I remember that so vividly?

I was intrigued by the power of the argument that one is being unselfish not to tie the other person to him or her.  The situation was so plausible that I read the entire novel without really caring too much whether or not the characters got married.  Actually, aren’t books usually more boring once the chase is over, anyway?  That’s why they end as soon as he carries her over the threshold!

I think it is easy to underestimate the power of a physical relationship to bind two people together- becoming one flesh?  Such a relationship cannot be terminated without some level of damage, either the damage from betrayal or desertion or the damage one does to one’s conscience after having betrayed or deserted.  One could argue that it is selfish to ask a person for a lifetime commitment to a deeply flawed person (such as we all are), but I think selfishness lies in seeking to give one’s self an out and leaving the other person vulnerable to some serious suffering.  I am responsible for myself, by I also bear responsibility for whatever swath of destruction I carve out in the lives of those I love.