KISSING CHAOS

The sun never shines in this book's world, a nondescript gray landscape inhabited by violent teens on the run from a mysterious crime. The hero, Damien, makes his first appearance in a blood-spattered T-shirt, trailed by the implacably mute Angela, a snub-nosed cutie who has an unshakable passion for her man. To engage readers, Dela Cruz adds Raevyn, a sassy, glasses-wearing brunette. She completes the trio of fugitives in an implausible plot twist: when she and Damien try to steal the same car, he forces her to join him and Angela in their flight from justice. Meanwhile, it seems Raevyn liberated a laptop from her one-night stand, Elliott. From that point on, the plot gets even sketchier as readers follow the gang on their run across the countryside. Angela is lost in her own obsessive reverie about Damien, while he wonders where they'll end up. Readers might puzzle whether there are sinister forces at work and a secret haunting Angela, but Dela Cruz elucidates little at the end of the tale, when Elliott and Damien have a showdown in a roadside men's room. The police burst in, guns blaze, men fall, yet many questions are left unanswered. Dela Cruz's artwork, with its soft charcoal haze, sets a mood, but he draws faces and cars almost exclusively, giving the work a claustrophobic feel. At all points, Dela Cruz favors ambiguity over clarity, and by the end of the book, readers will probably be confused over the plot and frustrated at the price tag. (June)