by Asher Frend

book review by Mari Carlson

“I realized he didn’t like me. He liked the control he had over me.”

Best friends Mikaila and Chara love each other like sisters or soulmates, sharing family struggles, high school drama, and premonitions about each other that bind them. But they argue over Asa, the bullied boy who has been infatuated with Mikaila since she befriended him in elementary school. A chess player, Asa strategizes to win Mikaila away from her boyfriend by hitting on Chara, then humiliating her.

Toggling between Mikaila, Chara, and Asa’s perspectives, Mikaila’s chapters are the only ones in the first person. Mikaila succeeds as the novel’s poster child. She is feisty, competitive, and impulsive. Running from grief, she moves to her dad’s house and stops communicating with Chara when they disagree. Her larger-than-life personality sets the book’s exuberant tone. The settings—beach towns in Maryland and Connecticut beset by storms—create a cohesive and cinematic backdrop. Like the book’s mirroring environments, the rift between Chara and Mikaila over Asa reflects other fractures.

Both their fathers say they get second chances with these daughters after they fail them in their own ways. The background supports dialogue as the book’s primary vehicle for moving through these relationships. In the face of open communication between fathers and daughters, Asa’s lies seem all the more insidious. Italicized asides to himself reveal the schemes his polite exchanges with others hide. The theatrical use of spoken (and unspoken) words works to expose the exploitation at the book’s core. Just as the dads get second chances, so do the girls, when the visions of the future each was meant to make true are dashed. Then, they show their resiliency. Mikaila might occupy the book’s spotlight, but Chara gets the last word. Dated chapters are portentous and suspenseful, driving the story toward a judgment day that does not disappoint.

RECOMMENDED by the US Review