Is there anything a person can do to stop it when someone is planning his suicide? This question haunts Frenchie Garcia, the narrator of this honest, ultimately hopeful novel.
After a years-long crush on popular Andy Cooper, Frenchie gets to spend "one cool night" with him (platonic, but a true adventure) during their senior year, before she wakes up to learn he committed suicide after they parted. Now it's summer, and Frenchie feels isolated from her friends and family. Her best friend, Joel, is obsessed with his girlfriend, Lily, and the bright future of her band called Sugar ("Of course, because that's exactly the kind of name someone like Lily would name it"). She doesn't get into art school, dashing her parents' dreams for her ("It's kind of like they want me to save the world, using art. No pressure or anything"). And she hates her hometown of Orlando, Fla. ("Florida isn't so much the Sunshine State as it is a crematorium").
Sanchez (The Downside of Being Charlie) gets her heroine's tough exterior and vulnerable insides in just the right balance. As Frenchie tries to make sense of Andy's suicide, her sole confidante is the Emily Dickinson buried in a nearby cemetery (not the poet herself). Only by walking through the events of that night, with someone who knows nothing of her past, does Frenchie begin to make peace with Andy's death. Sanchez provides a healing salve for teens who may know someone who has committed suicide, and also a strong testament against it. --Jennifer M. Brown, children's editor, Shelf Awareness