In letters to each other written for a school assignment Christina and Elizabeth share their lives; the happy, the sad, the confusing and the hurtful. My initial reaction was that the letter-writing device was a bit over-used, but soon became absorbed in the story. Moriarty brilliantly uses letters from such entities as The Association of Teenagers and The Society of People Who are Definitely Going to Fail High School (and Most Probably Life as Well!) to convey insecurities that only Elizabeth can know. Notes to and from her mom and postcards from her best friend gone missing fill in the blanks.
Despite the unlikely scenario of a teen running away to join the circus, this is a compelling read. The high school aged characters and the teen romance, however, make this book better suited to the YA collection, where Moriarty’s other titles currently reside.