FICTION

Girls on Fire

by Robin Wasserman
Harper. May 2016. 368p. ISBN 9780062415486. $25.99; ebk. ISBN 9780062417169. F
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YA author Wasserman's first novel for adults explores the fraught relationship between two teenage girls. Hannah Dexter meets Lacey Champlain during their junior year in high school. When she's with Lacey, the normally quiet and reserved Hannah becomes "Dex"—a darker, edgier risk taker who receives life lessons from Lacey in the fine art of skipping class and the music of Kurt Cobain. Before long, Dex and Lacey are inseparable. But when a popular basketball star from their school is found dead in the woods in a suspected suicide, readers gradually discover that the girls are caught up in other grim entanglements with their classmates.
VERDICT Although her subject matter is bleak, Wasserman writes with knowing clarity about teenage friendship and the emotional land mines of high school. Recommended for fans of Megan Abbott. [Previewed in Erica Ruth Neubauer's Mystery Preview, "Edge-of-Your-Seat Thrills," LJ 4/15/16.—Ed.]
Reviewed by Amy Hoseth, Colorado State Univ. Lib., Fort Collins , May 01, 2016
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