Grit

In small-town Sasanoa, Maine, everyone knows that 17-year-old Darcy Prentiss has a reputation for being easy, that her cousin Nell is beautiful and a little slow, and that a person can make decent money raking blueberries. And although no one knows what happened the previous summer when a girl disappeared, that doesn’t stop the speculation. Some blame migrant workers who help with the berry harvest, and a local cop thinks Darcy knows something: she was once best friends with the missing girl. There is a lot of plot in French’s debut: a creep Darcy hooked up with is harassing her, she’s being romanced by one of his friends, she and Nell are keeping a secret, and there’s the upcoming Bay Festival Princess pageant that Nell dreams of winning. While the mechanics of the story—secrets and lies, an angry girl who turns out to be loyally doing her best—initially feel overfamiliar, Darcy, her family, and the Maine setting come alive, and the ending lands an effective punch as seemingly disparate threads join up. Ages 14–up. Agent: Alice Tasman, Jean V. Naggar Literary. (May)