Driven

With teen protagonists and an absence of explicit scenes, Mulhall’s (Heavyweight) would-be gritty romance apparently aims at the YA market. But its curiously antique language is better aimed at grandparents doing the actual buying—or would be, if ageist slurs weren’t pervasive. Oliver Sutton is 18 and recently released from adult prison. Alone and living on the street, he’s reluctantly touched by the distress of an old woman. She and her sister give him a home—and he shows his gratitude by seeing them as “crafty old biddies” with “age-addled brains.” As for the hot guy next door, Simon Green, he’s “the other boy” and a “grease monkey.” Oliver also calls his bones “calcium-laced supports” and his fingers “precious digits.” The book is a baroque and improbable edifice of verbosity that overwhelms a simple plot of proximity, sympathy, and hormones leading to first love. Mulhall makes well-meaning gestures toward important issues such as teen incarceration and PTSD, but in this context they feel as far out of touch as the vocabulary. (Mar.)