Solid 2.5.

When Aaron gets pulled over for speeding and his little sister's caught with a bag of weed in her pocket, the officer makes him a deal: find out who the source of drug distribution is in his high school. Over the course of his duty, Aaron befriends Morgan and Skully, two girls who are themselves heavy into the school's drug culture and who have ties to the source. As soon as Aaron has the source in his sight, he's ready to spill to the police. Except, it's not as easy as it sounds. He's become friends with these people and he doesn't want them hurt.

NARC had a great premise, and the writing is fast-paced. As I was reading it, I knew exactly who this book would appeal to, since it has pretty great appeal -- readers who want to explore drug culture or drug life will eat this one up. I think this one will have good appeal to more reluctant readers, as well, particularly with the great pacing. Aaron himself is complex and throughout his story, he begins to understand that the people who choose to engage in drug use aren't simply burn outs. Many times, they're easing deeper pain. They're actual people.

The final quarter of the book, though, felt rushed and left me disappointed. At times, Aaron waffles between deciding to follow his orders or throwing those duties away in the name of friendship and honor. These moments were pretty powerful and telling about Aaron and about the issue of keeping secrets and keeping honor. The problem, though, was that the scenes at the end came rapid fire and didn't allow readers to really feel that mental torment with Aaron. (view spoiler)[ It really started falling apart when Aaron decides to leave home in order to protect his family's safety. He tells his mom he "has to go" for a while, and then he tells Skully that he's been kicked out of his house. This is all great set up for what's to come -- the bust -- but the thing is, as readers we never actually watch as Aaron thinks through his plan. It just happens. Prior to this, Aaron had given us a lot of insight into what he was thinking. After this moment, though, things just happen without tipping the reader off. Not always necessary to do that for the reader, but because the following events are huge -- the party in the Glades, the fight, the fire, the arrests, the release of those arrested -- I needed a little bit more of Aaron's insights. (hide spoiler)] Likewise, I felt the ending was a letdown. There was a great build up in the story but the final chapter flat lined.

Both Aaron and Morgan were great characters, and I found myself really caring about Haylie, too. I wish I had a little bit more about Aaron's father and the influence of his father on Aaron's choices and protective nature toward Haylie and his mother. I didn't find myself caring much about other characters, though, and I found Finch was pretty stock and uninteresting, even in light of what Morgan had to say about him. I wish we'd gotten a little bit more of Finch, perhaps through the lens of what Morgan had said about him to Aaron.

Longer review to come.