The Dead Enders

by Erin Saldin

In a place like Gold Fork, sometimes a secret is the only thing that’s really yours.

And Ana, Erik, Davis, and Georgie know a thing or two about secrets. Bound together by a horrible accident from their pasts, the friendship forged years ago in a youth group led by Davis’s pastor mother has managed to last through high school. They don’t agree on much, but, in a town full of weekenders, they all know what it’s like to be a dead ender—someone fated to stay trapped in a tourist town for the rest of their life.

Each of them has a plan to get out, but it won’t be easy. And now, with an arsonist working his way through the town and setting it ablaze, moving ahead with their lives will be even harder.

These four dead enders are about to find out just how much there is to lose in Gold Fork.

Genres: Young Adult, Thriller, Fiction, Romance, Contemporary, Mystery, Drugs

448 pages, Hardcover

First published May 1, 2018

About the author

Erin Saldin has been a Peace Corps Volunteer in Togo, West Africa and a bartender in New York City, and holds an MFA from the University of Virginia, where she was a Henry Hoyns Fellow in fiction. She has been awarded the Rrofihe Trophy in Fiction, and her work has been selected for The Best New American Voices 2009. In 2010, she was awarded PEN/Northwest’s Margery Davis Boyden Wilderness Residency, and spent six months living off the grid in the Klamath mountains of Oregon. Her short stories, reviews, and essays have appeared in Fivechapters, Open City, The New York Times, The Best New American Voices, The Northwest Review, and The Virginia Quarterly Review. Her debut novel for young adults, The Girls of No Return, was published in February, 2012 by Arthur Levine/Scholastic Books.

Erin lives in Missoula, Montana, where she teaches at the University of Montana.

Reviews

[Cassandra · Rating 4 out of 5]

*An ARC was provided by Edelweiss and the publisher in exchange for an honest review.*

“In this place, everything is both a gift and a weapon. Our only hope lies in knowing what can wound us.”

As seems to be a habit with me, I skimmed the synopsis for this book on Edelweiss and upon seeing a few keywords that I decided deemed the book interesting, requested it without a second thought. And now we're here.

This started out as the typical angsty, small-town story about a group of friends brought together by unique (and troubling) circumstances with a side dish of teen romance. Gradually, it morphed into a character study of how stifling living somewhere with socially limited mindsets can be, especially when you end up having to take care of those who are supposed to take care of you.

But by the end, this was a cryptically written tale on par with the message of Thirteen Reasons Why: the signs were all there that something was wrong but no one had been looking for them. Mental illness and small towns are such a toxic mix. I'm glad there are more books out there showing the reality of it without the romanticization.

The characters in this book were a lovable but flawed cast: Davis, the minister's son with a lasting obsession over his past romance, Ana, the daughter of a Latina single mother who's just trying to make ends meet, Georgie, the town dealer with boy troubles, and Erik, the runner who got fourth at States. I loved and hated every single one of them at one point or another. I love when books make me feel that way. It means they're close to real people.

I would definitely recommend this one to anyone who loves an occasionally deceptive tale like We Were Liars with a hint of All the Bright Places and a dash of a small town that doubles as a main character.

[Keah · Rating 4 out of 5]

It was a little slow to get into in the begging. But I was practically in tears by the end. Absolutely loved this book!

[Lindsay]

I stopped at 25% because I couldn't stand any of the characters. Ana, Erik, Davis, and Georgie's friendship are tied together by a night when they stupidly decided to sneak into a church during a camping trip and smoke a joint. The church caught on fire, burned down, a mother cat and her kittens perished, Ana was injured trying to save the cats, and another innocent student was injured as well. Fastforward to present day, these same characters are still breaking rules and smoking joints, not caring about what resulted with their careless actions before. Davis interns at the town's makeshift newspaper station, Ana lives in a small apartment with her mom who barely makes enough money at work, Erik is arrogant and acquired a scholarship to a fancy university out of town, and Georgie is a drug dealer with a bad attitude. They all reside in a tiny, dying town that only becomes entertaining when the vacationers arrive in the summer and winter. The vacationers don't like the townies and the townies don't like the vacationers, except when there is a party.

I received an ARC through Edelweiss.

[Joshua Hair · Rating 5 out of 5]

Holy crap. I have no idea why this book affected me so much, but it did. I finished it in two sittings that would have been one if sleep didn’t stop me. Something about it touched off on my own teenage years and the special tragedies some of us build our adult selves on. I felt myself in these characters, forced my own bitter memories back to the surface, and maybe, yes, cried just a little for what was lost. This won’t affect everyone this way; just those of you who know.

[Rebecca · Rating 2 out of 5]

I’m over this. The 4 narrators make things confusing. The integration of flashbacks doesn’t feel organic or natural. I was there for the burning of the church storyline, but everything else? The story moves too slowly to keep interest. *shrug* This is put-down-able.

[Emily · Rating 5 out of 5]

Summer is always a party in the tourist town of Gold Fork, but this year will be more unforgettable than the last, and not for all of the right reasons.

The book is written in the first person and switching between four high schoolers who just finished junior year. They are friends, of a sort. Tied together by an accidental fire that took place right before high school, or was it accidental? This summer someone has been committing arson around town, and everyone wants to know who the Gold Fork Pyro (GFB) is. The wealthy summer families start leaving in droves to get away from whoever it may be, and everyone's left wondering who's playing with fire.

Ana, a Latina whose kindness and compassion is unparalleled. She has a single mother who had her when she was 17, and it’s just been the two of them since Ana was born. Her mother is a masseuse at the Gold Fork Hotel spa and is worked off her feet, and always struggling to make ends meet and keep the stress and worry from Ana. When the chapel fire occurred, the fire that brought them all together, she ran back into the church to try to get out the mama cat and her newborn kittens, but was unable to make it into the church and only succeeded in gashing her arm leaving her with a scar from wrist to elbow, a constant reminder of what they did that night. Both for her, and for them. Now, she spends a lot of time at the elderly housing facility with Vera, an old woman with dementia who never has any visitors. Vera has become Ana’s makeshift abuela, since her grandparents rejected her and her mother before she was even born. Vera means everything to her, and this summer, she is faced with the gut-wrenching possibility that she could lose Vera forever.

Davis is the son of the town’s realtor and the town’s minister. He’s extremely bright, imaginative, nerdy, socially awkward, and a talented writer. He has a summer internship with the town newspaper, Gold Fork Roundup, where he mostly walks the editor’s dog and reads and chooses the ‘Letters to the Editor’ known as “The Forked Tongue.” Once the Nelson’s house is burned to the ground and declared arson, which happens to be built on the same property as the former chapel people can’t help making a connection, or trying to. Then fires start up all over town. Small ones in trash cans, little things that mean nothing, but are still out of the ordinary, Davis gets a chance to be a real reporter and uncover a real story. What happens when he finds the real story and does not like what he discovers?

George, or Georgie, as everyone calls her is the youngest of two. Her older brother is off at college and her parents, both working in low-paying jobs they are over-educated for, no longer speak to one another. Her home life leaves much to be desired, and she knows there is no money left from her parents to pay for her college after her parents take care of her brother. She has her band, and that is part of her ticket out of this quicksand of a town. That, and her job. Her parents think she’s a nanny to one of the wealthy summer families, but in actuality Georgie deal drugs and every penny is stashed away to get her out of this town so she and her girl punk band can make it in the city. But things don’t go as she planned at all this summer.

Erik doesn’t have brains, but he is a talented and much-loved track star. He’s won a full scholarship to the state university, which is his ticket out of this town and a dream come true. His father left him and his mother when he was 3, so his mother has been bringing him up alone. She’s a cleaner, usually working for the wealthy summer families, and is exhausted and empty much of the time. They live in poverty, but Erik’s mother’s behavior is odd in an umber of ways. The reader never knows exactly what diagnosis she has and there is no way to tell if this is because Erik doesn’t know, or if like other aspects of Erik’s life the reader is shut out of it, it’s kept apart, kept secret, even though the descriptions of Erik’s mom are in the first-person.

Readers learn how the accidental chapel fire happened, and from there how it brought the four of them close together. Georgie and Erik are close, and in truth there is a love there that isn’t completely platonic, though only Erik admits it out loud. Ana and Davis had a thing for each other before the fire, but afterwards have put up this front that they feel only friendship. There seems to be a general feeling that none of them deserve anything good because of what they did. Both Georgie and Erik find summer romances to keep them busy, and Ana and Davis seem drawn together more than ever.

We see romances crash and burn and others finally sputter into life. Wealthy people who wish for a simpler life and those with nothing hating how easily the rich have it. How much time they have, to use and to lose. Of children who cruelly neglect their parents, greedy people thinking only of themselves, horrible parents as well as absent ones (perhaps one and the same), mental health issues and suicide, as well as a deep critique of society. If you've never given thought to what it's like to grow up in a tourist town, The Dead Enders paints a bleak but honest portrait of those who live there all year long. This book is a YA version of Empire Falls (Russo, 2002) and just as clever, moving, and chock full of insight.

Part coming-of-age story, part mystery, part romance, part critique of society this book has something for everyone.

[J. Taylor · Rating 4 out of 5]

A perfect enjoyable summer read about a group of friends living in a vacation town with a hint of mystery and old secrets best kept. Really liked getting all their perspectives and didn't even need to look at the headers of whose chapter it was after a bit they were clear enough by themselves, I couldn't really call a favorite I liked them all in their own ways.

[Zoe · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of my favorite books. I cannot get over the complexity of the characters, plus Saldin has a talent for creating emotional intimacy (not sure if this is the right word, maybe vulnerability?) between the reader and the characters. The plot was super interesting. Would recommend 10/10. I stayed up way past my bedtime many nights unable to put the book down.

[Grace Usleman · Rating 3 out of 5]

Entertaining and fast-paced summer read. Not really something I would go out of my way to just sit down and read on its own, but really enjoyable for a few days at the beach and lots of time on your hands. Not gonna lie, definitely felt pretentious and IF I didn’t have this much time on my hands, I probably would have just put it down due to the annoyance of said pretentious energy (both writing and characters).

[Avery Roth · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was different than any other book I have read. It was confusing and changing of characters a lot of the time. Although it was probably a book for older audiences, it was close to the worst book I have read.
The main characters Ana, Erik, Davis, and Georgie switch throughout the book. Whenever it goes to each of their point of view, they all have different views on things. They were all bound together from bad pasts, and as a group from a church camp that they went to that ended badly. Throughout the book, they find out things that they never knew about each other, or they don't, and keep secrets.
One thing I didn’t like about this book was that it was very fast paced and I had to re-read many times to understand what was happening, or I wouldn't and just get lost. I did like that it had different points of view though because it was different than just one person giving their story.
Erin uses different points of view of the characters to make the book more interesting. She uses lots of profanity in the book to express what they are feeling and what the emotions are, and this book shows a variety of all emotions throughout the characters. So I wouldn't recommend this book to everyone.
I give this book 2 stars. I recommend it for older people, who can stick to a book and are okay with the use of profanity and some other parts. It was hard for me to stick to this and finish it on my own and took me forever to read.

[E.a.pischke · Rating 2 out of 5]

Wow, this book was waay too long for its own good. I didn't like or care about any of the characters(and I'm going to vent here about Dead Enders and many other YA books- how come all the characters are only children?! It drives me crazy! It's very unbelievable that this many people have no siblings...are the authors too lazy to incorporate a sibling or what?Anyway...)
This moved so slowly, with not much happening, except the same parties and teens mixed up about their feelings for each other.
I think the author gave up at the end and finished it off rather quickly.
I don't recommend The Dead Enders

[Brianna Summers · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's a setting like OUTER BANKS but at a lake with the atmosphere of Kimberly bell's #strangeronthelake and characters like RIVERDALE.


The shared secret of the fire brought them together but it's the secrets not shared that will keep them a part…


Even though nobody died in the church fire Georgie, Davis, Ana, and fhhysf never admitted they caused the fire and they never will. Even though Ana will have a scar for life and the others will always feel the repercussions, they'll always have each other. Until 2 years later when someone starts lighting fires, starting where the first fire began. Worried about a copycat and what it means to the friend group, Davis uses his intern journalism position to investigate who started the fires and hopes that there is no connection to the one they started. Meanwhile, Georgie is doing everything she can to get out of Gold Forks, Ana is fighting to keep her sergeant grandma in town, and Travis is trying not to drown. In a town that only has two seasons, the group of friends rage against what it's like to live in a tourist destination and what it's like to be left behind.


My favorite part about this book is how Gold Forks is its own entity. It's really visceral and it plays a dominant part in all the characters lives and motivations. It shows the dichotomy of loving a town but also hating it and how stifling it can be. How the characters go from a child's perception of Gold Fork to an adult's is beautiful. It’s a wonderful coming of age novel that doesn't shy away from the realities of life. And while the characters are not always honest with each other they are honest with themselves no matter how hard those truths may be. I would definitely recommend it. Do check the trigger warnings though. This book covers pretty heavy content with beautiful observations of the world and the teenage condition

[Danae · Rating 3 out of 5]

⭐️3.5
💧4

I think this is one of those books where you need to read it more than once to appreciate it. Because it felt like the author had a checklist and she needed to check off each one, but it may not have been necessary to have in the book.
I think I figured out what the weird random article things were: I think it’s supposed to be Davis’s letter about the town. The one that got published in the paper. It felt so random at first, but after learning about the letter and looking at the article thingies from that perspective it makes sense. Sort of. I still don’t understand why it was broken up the way it was, but maybe we’re not supposed to 🤷🏼‍♀️
I’m not happy with how she handled the mental health aspect of the book because it felt like it was there for the shock value not a the characters really feel this way and this is natural.
I loved Davis he’s just a great big awkward geeky goof. I had to warm up to Ana but I liked her in the end. I’m on the fence about Georgie and Erik because they were the two who felt the most like the author has a checklist vibes.
Warning: this book deals with mental health, suicide, arsons, classism, racism (one of the characters is Latina). Read at your own risk.

[Eva · Rating 1 out of 5]

This was just trying wayyy too hard to be the next “We Were Liars”! Hate to say that but that was what I could think of most when reading this. It’s basically that book but told from the perspective of the 99% instead of the 1%.
Some of the writing was very well said but ultimately was just left sitting there if that makes any sense. I felt that there never was any real change. The story begins miserably and ends miserably. No happy endings here really.
I think there were too many main characters and subplots—and combined with the descriptive metaphorical language—it left me confused in the end. The friend group just didn’t click right. Yes they were all different from each other but their differences didn’t bring them together like how the opposites attract trope normally does—it just seemed like a contest to see who was more miserable in life.
All in all, I think this book could have been better off as a film/tv adapt than a book of that makes any sense. The overall idea of it was good but the execution of that idea didn’t do it for me.
TW: suicide, drug/alcohol use, depression

[Becky · Rating 2 out of 5]

I think people who loved The Serpent King, another book I didn't care for, might also like this one. But it is really slow and meandering; it felt like the author didn't really know where the story was going. The four characters are distinct from each other in a bullet point kind of way, but nothing distinguishes their voices in their separate narrations and I even kept forgetting whose name belonged to who. The trapped in a small town thing didn't feel real... it took me to the very last chapter to realize that the parts interspersed between the character narrations was the article that Davis was writing. It speaks to the idea of feeling both affection for and desperation about being from a small town, but never succeeds in evoking that feeling. One YA author I can think of who really does that right is Kristin Cronn-Mills. Anyway, I really liked Saldin's book "The Girls of No Return," and was disappointed by this one.

[Rebecca Miller · Rating 4 out of 5]

This YA novel about a small lake town in Oregon, a place where Weekenders go for the summer, accurately depicts the class divide in a place like that. I live in a town like this and it has struck me for years how the wealthy move in here, take over, and turn long-time locals into a servant class. The characters are sympathetic (but flawed) and the writing is good, with a bit of a literary feel. I appreciated that not all the adults were jerks, and especially liked the female pastor and her husband, as well as the Latina single parent. I do wish that, given the audience, YA books such as this one were not so full of swearing and allusions to sex (though it takes place off the page). I suppose it does reflect reality for a lot of kids. At any rate, this one kept me turning pages.

[Gracemary Allen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Whew CHILE

The pretentious energy of this book was unreal! The story moved at a snails pace throughout the first 3/4. The mystery did pick up at the end and I found the conclusion satisfying, which is why it gets a three. A sizable part of why I was excited to read this book was the atmosphere the back cover promised. And i was sorely disappointed. I would have loved to read more scenes of the Dead Enders at the den. I found it hard to care about the impending doom of the quads hangout when we as the readers weren’t given much information on it. Ditto for Georgies band. The class conflict between the dead Enders and the Weekenders was a facet of the book that felt realistic. Ana’s relationship with Vera, the old woman she looked after, was another saving grace.

[Bailey Morris · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book if I’m being honest but it would really only be a 3.5 rating. The characters were interesting but I only felt really interested in Erik (which may have come from knowing he would die). Davis was mostly bland and Georgie and Ana were good but not as memorable. I wish we could’ve seen more of how Henry was such a horrible dude, because we see him through Georgie’s eyes until that end. The beginning was really slow and the novel didn’t really pick up until the last 100 or so pages which is why my rating is a little lower. However the ending was so sad and heartbreaking, especially as Georgie hopes he’s still out there somewhere. It was very real and tugged at your heart.

[Stephanie Gillis · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm really mad about how this book ended honestly. I'm so mad about it because I was so invested in Georgie and Erik and not really for Davis and Ana in this group of four friends. This book had important things to say and I felt them, I was reading with a wrinkled forehead the whole time which is not how I like to spend my time reading but I can't fault it for that because this book was never going to be a picnic. If you need something in the more literary with a hint of mystery kind of way, then you'll like this. It's not my usual cup of tea and I'm just really upset that the ending went that direction.

Also Content Warning for Suicide.

[Morgan Keating · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a gripping novel about life in a small town, which happens to be a very popular weekend destination in the summer, and centers on four friends navigating their final summer before life after high school. The character development is fantastic! I instantly felt connected to each of the male & female lead characters. Then comes the drama, which unfolds in a satisfyingly mysterious way where I could not predict each plot twist.
I'm an adult reader, obviously, but this YA novel was relatable and felt like a sweet dip back in the pool of my teenage years. I loved every page!

[Evelyn Weiser · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Dead Enders by Erin Saldin is a gripping read about four teens brought together by a shared secret. There is a strong theme of class, portrayed in the distinction between the kids from town, the dead-enders, and the rich kids who come to vacation, the weekenders. Some of the four main characters came more alive for me than others. I did think that the insights these kids had seemed very adult. Still, the story of these four kids, each grappling with who they are, and who they will become, against the mystery of an arsonist setting fires around their town, is mostly quite compelling.

[Jenna · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was actually having a hard time getting into this one. I also was having a hard time in the beginning figuring out who I was reading about. I had to flip back more than once to read the name again as the book itself isn't written in typical chapters. The ending, however, pulled my rating up to a 3 as it wasn't what I was expecting, and it didn't follow what I feel is the "general rule." This is something I enjoy because it isn't always done. I don't want to really any anything more because I'd give something away.

[Sara (sarasbooksandcoffee) · Rating 2 out of 5]

Book seemed slow starting for me but thought I would still try reading it but then ended up stopping, just couldn't get into the book. Going back and forth with the 4 characters just seemed like fluff was put into writing it to make a story. When reading the back of the book about mystery fires in a small town, I figured there would be a little more action then what there was for me. It might have ended as a good book but it wasn't one for me.

[Sabrina · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was a bit slow to start, but really improved as I went on. I love this type of book that gives you clues from the beginning that eventually come full circle and make sense once the truth is out. While I feel like the four main characters could have been written with more distinguishable voices, I thought how all the puzzle pieces of the story came together very strongly.

[Mimi · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked the last 100 or so pages but this book was Lifetime movie levels of realistic. Smoking of all kinds, hard drugs, teen drug dealers, drinking, random sex in the woods and in cars... the author must have had a much more interesting high school experience than I did. Vera was awesome. The rest of the characters, not so much.

[Jordan · Rating 2 out of 5]

mkay, first of all, there is no need to put my brain through the whirlwind of four teenage narrators. it was just a lot. The burning church storyline was the only great part, until it wasn’t, and then all i wanted to do was put this book down. The last 100 pages were 4 star worthy, the rest… trash 😐

[cj]

[DNF] this book was too slow for my taste. The storyline seemed to be unimportant to the overall plot of the secret between these friends and their ways out of this dead-end town. I simply couldn't bring myself to care about the characters' subplots and did not want to reach for this book again.

[Emmy · Rating 2 out of 5]

Man oh man... this book had the potential to be so much better than it was. The last 120ish pages are 5 star worthy, but the rest of it is just too much filler. Too bad, I really wanted to love this book.

[rutba · Rating 2 out of 5]

June 2020: 2.5 stars ⭐️⭐️
this book was kinda confusing/random. i didn’t really like any characters so the story was just whatever to me. i feel like the ending with eric causing all the fires was also kinda random. i did enjoy some lines in this book that i tabbed because i related a lot of them.

[Dani McCarthy · Rating 4 out of 5]

A bit predictable at times, but, overall, an interesting story about four teens going through their own coming of age stories together and a part. Knowing that sometimes the strongest thing that holds a group together is the secrets that they share.