Caring Is Creepy

In Zimmerman’s newest (after The Sandbox), 15-year-old Lynn Marie Sugrue falls into a twisted kind of love with Army specialist Logan Loy—whom she met online—in rural Georgia. Having punched a sergeant, he goes AWOL with Lynn’s help. Thinking no one will find him at her house, Logan hides in a storage space behind Lynn’s closet, and she takes care of him, finding perverse comfort in her clandestine houseguest. Meanwhile, her mother’s no-good boyfriend, Hayes, has made promises he can’t keep with folks of a bad sort, and now they’re threatening Lynn’s family and taking extreme measures to get what they want. Lynn’s relationship with Logan becomes less about romance and more about control, as she begins to say and do anything she can to keep him by her side, and Hayes’s enemies’ threats reach frightening levels. Lynn’s voice is authentically sardonic and compelling, but the ending is resolved too easily and the reasons for Lynn’s ill-treatment of Logan are unconvincing. Still, the intersections of Lynn’s and Logan’s story line with the consequences of Hayes’s shady dealings are consistently exciting. (Apr.)