Jamie is a motherless girl searching for approval and acceptance, which is why she is so easily influenced by her cousin Fawn, and ultimately brought down a path of trouble and tragedy.

Fawn is beautiful, manipulative, and determined to have a good time. When Fawn comes to live with Jamie and her Uncle Raymond for the summer, Jamie becomes enamored with Fawn and her lifestyle, and lets Fawn completely transform not only how she looks but her behavior as well. Fawn is a selfish, troubled girl, who sadly doesn't care about anyone else.

Jamie lives with her Uncle Raymond. Jamie doesn't have a clue about the whereabouts, let alone the fate, of her mother. Raymond harbors the secret of his almost unnatural devotion to his sister/her mother, the responsibility and compulsion he felt to keep saving her from her the train wreck that was her life.

Jamie's undoing via Fawn and Raymond's story of his attempts to help his sister, Jamie's mother, are told side-by-side in this novel. Unfortunately, they weren't interwoven as well as they could have been.

Overall, it was still a good read. Sometimes even a '3-star-I-like-it' book is enough to entertain you. I guess this is my version of one of those Mary Higgins Clark mass market paperbacks that other reads. (Good grief, now those are unbearable.)

So if you want to be distracted and entertained by someone else's drama for 200+ pages, then this is worth picking up. It's written well enough and is entertaining enough.

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Some quotes....


With an insinuating whisper, a sigh, Gerry & The Peacemakers began to sing "Ferry Cross the Mersey," and it was too mournful, too loaded. Suzette in the backseat, wrapped in his jacket, was suddenly too much cargo. He couldn't carry her to safer waters. He couldn't make decisions for her, couldn't live her life or protect her from anything or anyone, least of all herself.
Page 116

She was never happy. I don't know why, it was just part of her makeup. I have a theory that maybe she didn't think she deserved to be happy. That she didn't think she deserved to be alive even.
Page 226

It had always been the thing Raymond like least about Suzette, the way she was able to reinvent herself with force over and over - but now he wondered if he wasn't wrong to think so. Wasn't it a small miracle that someone like Suzette, or anyone at all, could be bruised and beaten down repeatedly and still find a way, a reason to pick themselves back up again? Could still find faith or make it from scratch? It was a loaded gift, Suzette's infinitely renewable innocence, and a dangerous one, but a gift nonetheless.
page 235

Was there anything sadder than starting your life? I didn't think there was. .. This was my body, a sink of memory and doubt, a messy but salvageable bridge. A place to begin.
page 254