First published 2008
Kenny keeps her hair cropped like a boy's and wraps ACE bandages around her chest. At seventeen, she lives with Aunt Glo, her father's girlfriend who took her in when he went to prison for drug trafficking. Her real mother died of cancer years ago. Kenny's gender ambiguity makes her an outsider at school and sometimes at home, where even her adopted family struggles to understand her. When a college student enters the wrong house and gets murdered in their rundown coastal town, Kenny becomes fixated on the dead girl. The killing triggers her deepest fear that she'll be abandoned when she turns eighteen. Kenny decides she must make herself essential to Aunt Glo, hoping to earn the older woman's love even though they share no blood relation. She throws herself into this mission while grappling with questions about her sexuality and identity in a family of misfits living in a town past its prime.
Genres: fiction, coming-of-age, contemporary, young-adult, family-drama
Vibes: emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: found-family, outsider
Setting: Coastal Town
Period: Contemporary
208 pages · Hardcover · Crown
Content warnings: mental-illness