Evie Boyd, a middle-aged woman, remembers the summer before she started high school, during which she made new friends, smoked a lot of dope, fell in love, and almost murdered some people.

This book was fine but very forgettable. There was something missing in the emotional transmission; I didn't feel the building tension at all but recognized that I was supposed to feel something. Maybe the disconnect is due to the dual time settings. The present-day plot seemed to serve no purpose, but it kept the 1969 plot at arm's length and prevented real submersion in Evie's young mind. As I was reading, I was already forgetting what had happened a few pages ago. The events seemed to slide into each other without true direction. By the end of the novel, I was no more convinced in the inevitability of the outcome than I had been at the beginning. The prose is a bit over-the-top but not bad. I just wish I had connected to the characters and plot more!