Not knowing how her family has landed in witness protection is driving seventeen year old "Meg" crazy. But she knows the two rules of being in witness protection... be invisible and don't make friends. Easier said than done, and after six placements in the last year she is bound and determined to make this placement stick as the constant moving and stress of learning new identities and back stories is tearing her family apart.
Quentin Jacobsen has always been hopelessly in love with Margo Roth Spiegelman for as long as he can remember. When she shows up at his window telling of a night of adventure he is sure to say yes. But the day after she disappears and appears to have left behind clues as to her whereabouts and Q is determined to find her. A paper town for a paper girl.
The two narrators alternate chapters telling the story of the splinters of their individual families melding into a new one. Eighth-grader Stewart and Ninth-grader Ashley are on their way to becoming step-siblings, with Stewart and his widower dad moving in with Ashley and her divorced mom--though Ashley's recently out-of-the-closet dad is still living in their backyard laneway house. They are a complete contrast of personalities and styles. As Stewart describes:
Elena has been struggling since a young age, shutting people out and retreating into herself. By 17, she is diagnosed with anorexia and is continually in and out of treatment centers. This is about her journey, the ups and the downs of her eating disorder.
The America that we know is gone - destroyed by war and a biological disaster. The country is split in two. The dangerous East is full of human survivors riddled by mutation. Lane has always lived in the West, behind a giant wall meant to keep her safe from the feral, mutated creatures of the East. She soon learns that her father is a fetch -- hired to travel into the Feral Zone and retrieve valuable art. When he doesn't return she is forced to go into the feral zone to save him and also finish his mission -- retrieve something of value for a high-ranking official.
Eleanor and Park at first glance seem to be two different people, but after Park saves Eleanor from the horrors of the bus one day, they discover how much they complete each other. They find themselves in love, knowing that it probably won't last, but hoping beyond reason that it will.
Tish is writing journal entries as an assignment for her English teacher, Mrs. Dunphrey. She has promised not to read any entries marked "Don't read this" and that is exactly what Tish writes before almost every entry. As Tish struggles with her abusive father and neglectful mother, she writes about those struggles in the journal. Dunphrey comments positively about how much she is writing, asks her to write some entries she can actually read, and also scolds her for not turning her journal in on time and for not completing other homework assignments.
John Darnielle’s second book is about the space between two separate worlds – the one we live in and the one we think we live in. It’s a place where aspirations are born, where imagination develops . . . also where great loneliness lives.
