I’ll Meet You There by Heather Demetrios

Alex and Josh are lost souls for two very different reasons. Josh just returned from Afghanistan minus a leg. The all American boy, good at sports and getting girls, is not quite what he used to be. That’s before you consider the nightmares and how he stiffens when he hears loud noises, such as fireworks.

Alex, on the other hand, lost her father five years earlier and her mother has been on a steady decline ever since. Now, having lost her job, her mother has taken to staying in their trailer and is seeing a total sleazeball who encourages her to drink. Alex is wondering whether she’ll have to be the family’s total support and be forced to turn down her full scholarship to San Francisco State.

Somehow, though, at Josh’s ‘welcome home’ party in July, the two seem to connect. What a contrast, Alex the ‘good girl’ never drinking (because her father died in an auto accident when driving while intoxicated) and Josh, who will chug a beer and crush the can.

Alex, for some reason, brings out Josh’s softer side and Josh makes her feel safe.

In I’ll Meet You There, readers will feel the complexity of Josh and Alex’s relationship and the insecurity each feels. Alex, having never had a boyfriend and Josh, needing to shed his image of chasing everything in a skirt, are unsure both of their feelings and how to act upon them.

Demetrios touches on the PTSD that Josh faces after returning from the war zone. Although it is not the premise of the book, it certainly plays a role in Josh’s (and Alex’s) life. A more pointed and wonderful book dealing with PTSD is Patricia McCormick’s Purple Heart. Things a Brother Knows by Dana Reinhardt is also worth reading.

I’ll Meet You There is a poignant story bound to, at different times, bring a tear to your eye and a smile to your face.

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Kiss of Broken Glass by Madeleine Kuderick

Kenna is Bakered Acted–after being found deliberately cutting herself in the school bathroom she is sent for psychiatric evaluation for 72 hours at Adler Boyce Pediatric Stabilization Facility, aka Attaboy,

In this novel-in-verse, Kenna describes her roommate, Donya, rail thin Skylar and cute Jag, both patients and several doctors and nurses. She describes how she started cutting to fit in, always feeling less loved by her mother than her perfect sister Avery. She describes her love for her little brother, Sean. She details why another student, Tara, turned her in to the principal…not necessarily for altruistic reasons.

Kiss of Broken Glass is a compelling novel, in part because it is well written. While not graphic, it gets its point across, the beginnings of cutting, the need to keep doing it, that fact that three days at Attaboy isn’t going to change much…but then again it might be a small start.

The second reason Kiss of Broken Glass is compelling is that it is written from personal experience. In the Author’s Note, Ms. Kiderick tells readers that her daughter was a cutter, exposed to this as early as sixth grade, a statistic I don’t want to even contemplate. Her daughter was caught and as she says “involuntarily committed under Florida’s Baker Act.”

Cut by Patricia McCormick was the first book I read on cutting and quite the book it was. It may very well set the standard by which other books are judged. However, since then there is Scars by Cheryl Rainfield, Wintergirls by Laurie Halse Anderson and now Kiss of Broken Glass, which certainly holds its own on this topic.

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