The normally stable father of high school junior Jordan becomes involved with a married woman, then kills someone. Told as a flashback through Jordan's first-person narrative (although Jordan does not reveal at the beginning who dies), the novel takes place during the summer on a fictional island in western Washington. Debut YA novelist Caletti peoples Jordan's world with fascinating characters, including a hippie mother who runs a bed and breakfast with her kinetic artist husband, and her best friend, status-focused Melissa, who works with Jordan at a weight loss center run by an eccentric Christian couple. Jordan herself can be funny, making light of her situation with caustic remarks (""""He was an optometrist for God's sake"""" she says when people ask her what her murderous father was like), and also vulnerable (""""That's not what people want to hear-that my father was just a normal guy whom I loved, love, with all my heart"""") as she leads readers carefully towards her eventual realization of her own identity. She also weaves in pieces of advice she's picked up from Big Mama, a wise, warm-hearted fishery worker who often incorporates salmon into her lessons. Two subplots involving Jordan's romantic interests create unnecessary distractions, but captivating details make this scandalous story seem all too real, and Jordan's magnetic voice marks Caletti as a writer to watch. Ages 12-up. (Nov.)

This lengthy, entertaining, atmospheric first novel explores the issues of trust and betrayal. Seventeen-year-old Jordan McKenzie lives on a small island in Puget Sound with her calm, reliable, divorced father. Her mother, a determinedly free spirit, runs a boarding house filled with eccentric characters. Then Jordan's world falls apart when her father falls in love with a beautiful, wealthy, married woman. Meanwhile, Jordan's beloved, feisty grandfather dies unexpectedly, and she loses her virginity with a popular but sadistic boy. Jordan's authentic teenage voice--self-absorbed, sarcastic, naive--will hold readers, as will the emotional issues of sadness and abandonment, which pack more punch than the sensationalist elements of the plot.

Alternating between pithy humor and ominous foreboding, high-school junior Jordan MacKenzie's voice describes her life, family, and friends in this gothic with an edge. The edge is from her own witty commentary on life on Parrish Island, an imaginary community located off the coast of Washington State in the Strait of Juan de Fuca. The bringing together of sadness and foreboding with humor is reminiscent of Elvin in Chris Lynch's Slot Machine (1995) although Jordan appears to be less intentionally working at being funny. It is simply her take on life: her values, her awareness of pretensions, oddities, and incongruencies. The characters leap to life (including the dogs), as Jordan details the daily events that inexorably lead first to tragic events, and ultimately to a rescue of a sort. Threading throughout is the awareness that horror is ahead. When it does arrive, it doesn't quite seem as ghastly as expected. Most of the plot is driven by actions of the adults in the story, but when Jordan chooses to act, she's obviously learned a trick or two about manipulation and getting what you want. She's chosen to live with her father as the more normal one of her parents, but he becomes obsessed with a married woman and Jordan's life spirals out of control. While not the focus, her own first miserable experiences with sex and the death of a grandparent are encompassed in this somewhat long, but nonetheless fast-paced debut. Humor gets little respect, but Caletti expertly succeeds in capturing the way a smart teen can grasp and skewer her world and what passes for everyday normal in a wry tone that never fails to recognize the seriousness of the situation. Cosmic comedy. (Fiction. YA)

Gr 9 Up-From the beginning of this absorbing novel, readers know that Jordan's father will kill the husband of the woman with whom he's having an affair. The tone of the story, however, is unexpectedly light as Caletti introduces the teen's free-spirited mother, ultra-religious boss, colorful neighbors, and optometrist father. Caught up in her own romantic dilemmachoosing between a cruel but good-looking classmate and the quirky, caring brother of her best friendJordan is slow to realize that her father is having an affair with glamorous Gayle D'Angelo. In the last 100 pages, she must come to terms with what her father has done and find a way to rebuild her own life. Most of the novel, however, deals with her day-to-day life, friendships, and family relationships. Caletti lovingly describes the setting, a small town on the San Juan Islands in Puget Sound, and Jordan's several adult mentors are well developed as characters. Her own poor choices at times run parallel to her father's, as she dates and has a disastrous sexual encounter with a boy she knows is bad news before finally wising up. Through it all, she manages to observe the people around her with love and amusement. Teens will gain insight into how obsessive love can drive even ordinary-seeming individuals to commit terrible acts. Miranda Doyle, San Francisco Public Library