The beginning was absolutely crazy. After a party bust, our four anti-heroes are on the run from the cops. They steal a car, pick up supplies at a gas station, and find a cabin to hide out in. Over the course of the novel they begrudgingly become attached to one another and open up about their pasts.
Our narrator, Sam, has a drug addict and alcoholic for a mother. When Sam was only six her mother was sent to prison for making meth. Andi, York, and Boston—her three new accomplices—all come from equally rough backgrounds.
“Grandma always said jail was for people who did a little bad and prison was for people who did a lot of bad.”
The plot was really fast paced and an easy read, but despite this, I felt like the characters were lacking some depth. They fit a bit too perfectly into their separate categories as rebel, bully, geek, and pariah.
Andi was a “rebel” in the truest sense of the word. As an ex–popular girl, she has now transformed into a wild, smoking kleptomaniac with tattoos and dreadlocks. The thing is, her character was barely developed past these broad generalizations.
She was presented as a tough “good girl gone bad,” but that seemed to be all of her personality. The reason behind why she rebelled in the first place was barely touched on. Why did she feel the need to steal things? I found the same underdevelopment in Sam, York, and Boston, though I’m not going to take the time to dissect them all.
I liked how the characters got back on track (morally) at the end by deciding whether to turn themselves and a bag of 30-pound drugs in to the police. I would have liked more of the emotional experience Lange perfectly captured in Dead Ends, but I won’t deny a group of rogue teens running from the police wasn’t a fun read.
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