BADD

Alcohol, weed, fighting and sex are par for the course for Ceejay, except sex is not a big thing personally. Her mentor and close pal, big brother Bobby, has always been in and out of trouble, too. When Bobby is dishonorably discharged from service in Iraq, Ceejay can hardly bear his increasingly self-destructive actions. And she really can’t stand that he’s palling around with Captain Crazy and Mr. White, a loopy Vietnam-era hippie and a geeky boy, respectively, instead of her. Gradually, though, they help to change both her and Bobby’s outlook—but when Mr. White, now her friend, suggests that Bobby may be suffering from PTSD, Ceejay can’t bear it. Tharp is not quite as sharp with females as with men (Knights of the Hill Country, 2006, etc.), but he successfully draws Ceejay’s intensity and pride, as well as her self-destructive behavior, all of which makes her strut and explains both the love and the fight in her. Allowing Ceejay to be reporter and observer hones the story to essentials without moral judgments interfering. Absorbing and redemptive. (Fiction. YA)