This well written update to Catcher in the Rye depicts the confusion of high schoolers trying to find their way into adulthood. At first I mistook "wall flower" as code for a gay character, but it turns out that the author character is only a wimp, a soft-hearted crybaby, who I am surprised is not beaten, or at least ostracized by the end of the story, because that is the likely result of such a personality at my high school, which pre-dates the era in which this was written. And Ohio, my home state, is not far, or different, from Pennsylvania. Of course, he has to be soft-hearted in order to get away with some of the scenes he is witness to here. Nonetheless, he does a decent job of teasing out the small hypocrisies, the animal instincts, and most of all the sadness of the whole high school experience.