Wow. That was an emotional rollercoaster of a book. And talk about intense theme exploration. I see people asking on here all the time if one book or another is "good for their teenager to read," and all those questions come with follow ups like, "is there sex or swearing?" I tell you what, if this book is considered YA, then those questions are ALL moot. So many difficult topics were broached here, child abuse (physical, psychological and emotional), violent deaths (of young people), racism/homophobia/general bullying, child porn and parents in prison, emotional distress and suicidal thoughts...I mean, if I had kids I'd almost rather they read about things as straightforward as sex and swearing instead. Then again, these are the topics that need to be talked about or else they spiral out of control and poison us in real life. These things are real and should be acknowledged in order for us to be able to deal with them. In any case, all, in all, this novel was so impressive. I'd seen it featured in a lot of blog posts about great YA novels and eventually, I figured I'd like to see what the hype was about. Well deserved hype indeed. The trials of living in a small, rural, uneducated, blue collar community and how that affects people in so many different ways, from Lydia feeling confined and not being able to wait to escape all the way to Travis/Dill, who figured that's all there was to life. I read somewhere that the author worked at a camp in a rural area and this was his love letter to the youth he worked with, a love letter about how any situation is changeable and there is a future for anyone. And sometimes those futures may be cut short, unfairly, but not going for it, whatever it is, would be a greater failure than trying and not succeeding in the way you imagined it being. And in the end, if you have the courage to try for things - standing up for/against someone, telling someone how you feel about them, showing the world a talent, trying for a future you didn't think you had/deserved - you'll find a fullness in life that wasn't there before. A fullness that might make it more worth living. Well, I can't say for sure, because the stories told in the novel are so different from my own, but this book reached me, touched my emotions, and I would say it was a very very successful love letter, hopefully touching the hearts and minds of all the youth it was written for like it touched mine. Beautiful coming of age story on so many levels.