I finished Lauren Strasnick’s first novel, Nothing Like You at 4 a.m., with a lump in my throat the size of a fist. This was strange because her book didn’t contain any of the usual tear-jerker tropes for me: dead grandparents, dead dogs. It is, of course, a story of loss—but that loss (of the narrator Holly’s mother) happens off-screen before our story even begins. Nothing Like You is in fact the story of how Holly attempts, and largely fails, to deal with her mother’s death. It opens with Holly losing her virginity to Paul, a boy she hardly knows and mostly doesn’t even like. I think it was mostly the tone of the book—sparse and melancholy—that hit deep. The raw emotional honesty is clear in passages like these:

"She’s my girlfriend, Holly. I have to kiss her." But he didn’t have to kiss her. He didn’t have to date her or love her or run his fingers through her hair. It’s a choice, love. Even if she were threatening pills or razorblades, blackmailing him into loving her, the least he could do was look miserable loving her back.

I mean, ouch.

But the plot is accurate and affecting, too. As Holly becomes involved with Paul, a preppy teen whose girlfriend she also ends up befriending, we learn about the complexities of her world: her best friend, Nils, who everyone assumes is her boyfriend; her father, Jeff, who Holly frets over; the psychic she considers visiting to gain some closure over the loss of her mom to cancer. There’s nothing particularly unusual about Holly’s situation, but it’s the accuracy of the details—the clubhouse she shares with Nils, and the records they listen to; her memories of her New Age mom’s crystal conventions; the small connections she makes to a drama teacher who once knew her mom—that make this novel exceptional. Though the language is very contemporary (there is an occasional text-speak aside or instance of multiple exclamation point, though these are dropped naturally and do not seem intrusive or gimmicky), Holly’s situation rang true for me. Though I ended my high school career in 2002, I couldn’t help but feel like I knew Holly, or girls very much like her.

Hell, there were times when even I was a Holly—when I made stupid, selfish choices, believing them to be justified or even romantic, because I wanted an escape from my suburban life. Holly’s California suburbs are a world apart from the universe of my New Jersey adolescence, but her experiences are no less universal. That she can’t see, for example, how she’s being manipulated by Paul—their relationship has an almost-violent and certainly-threatening undercurrent—makes her sadly accurate, though sometimes a little pitiable. I’ve seen some reviews online that decry the poor choices Holly makes, but I can’t help but wonder, in response, if those reviewers were ever teenagers who lived in the shadow of grief.

That’s how I can’t help but feel about most complaints about Strasnick’s debut. Yes, Holly makes poor choices. Yes, she has to live with some really miserable ramifications. No, this story does not give you an easy, neat, or morally clean ending.

But it’s real. It’s so very, very real.

I can’t help but draw comparisons between Nothing Like You and Kody Keplinger’s 2010 debut, The DUFF. They both involve girls who use sex to escape their bigger real-life problems. However, where Keplinger faltered was in the accuracy of the situation—in the rosy ending, and the way everything tied together perfectly. And that’s where Strasnick excels. If Keplinger’s book is something akin to a pretty good movie about high school--Pretty in Pink, maybe—then Strasnick’s book is high school. And though the ending is sad, complex, and emotionally messy, there’s also a note of bitter sweetness there, one that will likely seem truer to older readers and one which makes fewer saccharine promises to younger ones. Though Holly’s future will be as complicated as her past, as she embarks on it we know that, though it might not always be easy, it really will be okay.