Kirkus Reviews
A teenage girl whose mother struggles with mental illness navigates a new school, new friendships, and a crime she may have committed.Seventeen-year-old Lennox Oliver, the new girl in her San Jose, California, high school, is finally fitting in and finding friends after having lived in many different places with her traveling ER nurse father. It's been the two of them since she was 9, ever since her mother was admitted to a mental hospital for treatment for her schizophrenia. One night, while Lennox is driving with friends, she hits someone-she clearly sees the frightened girl in her headlights before feeling a thump. But while there's a dent in the car, there's no body. In the days following, Lennox feels like she's unraveling, and she worries that she's succumbing to schizophrenia too. Jayne paints a picture of a teen whose life feels almost perfect-with nice friends, a boyfriend, a great school-except for the possibility that she's a murderer looming over her. This story, told with plenty of flashbacks, visions, red herrings, and snappy dialogue, draws readers into a twisted tale exploring questions of conscience and belonging. Anxiety inducing and full of twists and turns yet realistic and relatable, it will keep readers on the edges of their seats. Characters are cued White.A fast-paced thriller that will have readers questioning what's real. (Thriller. 14-18)
Publishers Weekly
(Fri Oct 06 00:00:00 CDT 2023)
When 17-year-old new girl Lennox Oliver turns her car onto Hicks Road in San Jose, she ignores her friends’ claims that it’s haunted, until a frightened, unknown blond girl suddenly appears in the middle of the road. Lennox knows she hit the stranger—she felt the thump, and there’s a dent in the front of her car—but she doesn’t find a body, and her passengers deny having seen anything unusual. As her peers go about their lives, Lennox is preoccupied with the mystery of her assumed hit-and-run. Could it have been a deer? Or a hallucination brought about by hereditary schizophrenia, for which her mother has been hospitalized since Lennox was nine? A blissful distraction arises in the form of a fledgling romance with popular senior class president Owen Rossum. But as more clues emerge surrounding the incident on Hicks Road, the more confused Lennox becomes. If the resolution is a little uneven, quick pacing, wry prose, and abundant flashbacks that flesh out Lennox’s history with her mother and her mental health balance out this climactic thriller by Jayne (The Girl in the Headlines). Main characters read as white. Ages 14–up. Agent: Amberly Finarelli, Andrea Hurst Literary. (Aug.)