wow. so this lady is basically the george r.r. martin of YA. 
 it's a rough ride for the YA-fans who have stuck to Susane Colasanti and Sarah Dessen up until now. i would recommend some sort of transition-novel if you are going to make the leap from sweetie-pie contemporary YA romance novels to... this. 
 this book has one of the main protagonists kill a baby on page 28. 
 just so we are all on the same page. 
 oleander, smalltown kansas is the setting of this multi-voiced narrative about a day when several people went mad with violence, each going on a killing jag that ended with them taking their own lives. except for cass, the aforementioned baby-killer. she lived through her defenestration with no memory of what she had done. since then, her family has cut off all ties with her, leaving her to rot in an institution and moving away from oleander and the memories of the violence that occurred. also in the novel's character-lineup is a religious zealot who witnessed a crucifixion/arson scenario on that day, a boy who lived through a drugstore shootout, a trailer park girl whose family is well into the meth trade, except for the ones who were stabbed to death during the killing day, and a closeted jock who watched his lover get intentionally hit by a car and smooshed up against a tree. 
 so... damage all around. rounding out this group is an eight-year-old boy, the brother of drugstore shootout survivor who has his own problems, and the sister of the baby cass killed. there are other secondary characters, but those are the main foci. 
 and not all of them will make it out alive, despite having lived through so much horror already. because this book is cruel. 
 some time has passed for oleander since the events of the killing day. life goes on, people deal with the repercussions of the day in a variety of ways, and while no one has any answers about what happened to make people go crazy, it becomes just another slice of small-town lore and dusty gossip. 
 until, because the town has not suffered enough, a tornado strikes. 
 much of the town is destroyed, and some of the most extensive damage is to a mysterious facility on the edge of town, and after the tornado does its thing, people in town start behaving strangely again with all the rage and the lack of impulse control. to make matters worse, suddenly they find themselves without communications, and the town is quarantined by soldiers with guns. 
 oh, dear. 
 so we have a perfect storm of awful: lack of information, rage, meth, confusion, frustration, limited resources, in many cases a lack of parental figures, and growing alarm and violence. in many ways, it is like Under the Dome. except interesting and not all bloated. it's also kind of like A Prayer for the Dying and Who Was Changed and Who Was Dead, or Dark Inside, but even darker and killier. 
 this book is a really fun ride. i have some quirked-eyebrows at the explanation for the events, but not enough to dampen my enjoyment of it. it's a fast-paced little shocker of a book, and you have to admire the balls on this lady to have written a novel for young adults with this much graphic violence and cavalier character-disposal. 
 that's all you get for me. it's is an incredibly dark and twisted little piece of cake. 
 read the book!!