i honestly don't know what to do with this review. 
 because i feel bad for only giving the book 2 stars, but it just didn't work for me. and that doesn't mean it's not a good book or that it's not an important book, it just means that i, karen tiffany brissette, did not enjoy reading it. which is a drag, because i have liked every other book that i have read by her. this one seemed weak,but then in the endnotes, she says that this is the first YA book she ever sold, which i guess means it is a re-issue, although i can't find any real information on that on her site or anywhere. but it was almost a relief to learn that factoid, because now that i know this is not a "new" book, i can understand why this one came across as less mature and less potent than her "later" books. 
 phew. 
 the subject matter is very important, which is another reason i feel horrible for not liking it. it is about a boy who is brutally murdered, most likely because small town wisconsin doesn't like it when their churchgoing teenagers are rumored to be gay. or are artistic. or when they take portraits of other boys sweaty and shirtlessly napping after hard farm work. 
 because as bubbled as i am here in new york, there are still pockets of this fine country where gay kids get beat up. where they don't have their own schools. where they have to hide one of their most salient, defining characteristics out of fear. and that's such a hard path, and if books like this can help someone struggling with this situation, or help one closed-minded person realize that no one has any business judging who likes what kind of genital, then i have to applaud the book for doing a public service towards a goal i would like to see realized. 
 if only i didn't hate the narrator so much. his weakness, his waffling, his telling us time and time again that he is not himself gay, he just doesn't have time for a relationship, is why he doesn't have a girlfriend. and i think if it were written differently, it would have been more successful in fine-tuning the unreliable-narrator into something more nuanced, but it just reads flat, to me. 
 oh, but i did like that the murdered character saw rhode island as a place to escape to; wanting to go to RISD, where he assumed people would be nicer to him. it's true, rhode island may be tiny, but we were founded by a buncha outcasts, so we're kinda laissez-faire. 
 you have pleased the ghost of roger williams, ilsa j. bick 
 but you shouldn't listen to me - i'm just some old lady who is drinking wine alone on a friday night. i clearly have no business having opinions about anything. read this book, but know that as far as her writing goes, it gets better. 
 didja see what i did there?? 
 cheers.