The Complete History of Why I HATE Her -- Jennifer Richard Jacobson

Wanting to escape her own life for a while, seventeen-year-old Nola leaves Massachusetts for a summer job in Maine.  On the bus trip up, she meets the vivacious, exciting, unpredictable Carly.  They hit it off, and are sad to leave each other at the end of the ride -- but then, a few weeks into Nola's summer of waitressing, a waitress leaves, Carly gets the job, and Nola's summer of Being Someone Else truly begins.

But escaping your own life isn't really possible, especially if your ties are strong.  And so, before the end of the summer, Nola will have some big choices to make, even though they aren't necessarily choices she'll bring on herself.

I don't think what I wrote in the next (after this one) paragraph is a spoiler, because I called it during their very first conversation on that bus trip, but if you're worried, just know that I thought it was a strong book, and worth reading.  The writing was spare, and the author didn't condescend to her readers or try to explain too much -- I felt that she really inhabited her narrator.  While I saw some of the plotting coming a mile away -- hence my upcoming not-really-a-spoiler-but-you-might-see-it-as-a-spoiler -- some of Nola's growth (and some of her choices) surprised me.  Nola didn't spend a lot of time explaining her changing feelings to the reader -- she acted on them and left it to us to figure her out.  Which I liked. 

So, the POSSIBLE SPOILER:  It's pretty much Single White Female, minus the murderousness and plus a bit of coming-of-age.  I'll probably be recommending it to Gail Giles fans, with the caveat that it's much quieter than most Giles books.  There are no pyrotechnics in The Complete History of Why I HATE Her, but sometimes the everyday realism of a friendship-turned-claustrophobic-then-OH-MY-GOD-it-was-secretly-oh-so-wrong-from-the-start can be scarier than, you know, being buried alive or whatever.  END POSSIBLE SPOILER.

Oh, also:  YAY, MAINE.

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Previously:

Stained (A VERY early post, in which I was quite mean.  But I REALLY didn't like the book.  And I still don't understand the starred reviews.  Maybe I should revisit it.)

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Book source:  Library copy.

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