Soon after we encounter Melony Barnett in Lauren Carter’s emotionally searing novel, This has Nothing to do With You, she is volunteering at an animal shelter and has grown attached to a dog named Sunday. In her early twenties and living by herself in small-town northern Ontario, Melony is barely functioning. She works at the local library and has her own apartment, but otherwise she seems to be twisting in the wind. When she ill-advisedly decides to adopt Sunday, renaming him Grommit, despite the fact that her building doesn’t allow pets, her life begins to spiral. This can be traced back to her tragic family history. It turns out that three years earlier, immediately after Melony’s high school graduation—when she was bursting with excitement about university and a career as a veterinarian—her mother murdered her husband and his lover. In the messy aftermath, Melony and her brother Matt were left with only each other for support. But Melony, at eighteen, was unable to deal with the trauma. With her father dead and her mother pleading guilty and facing life in prison, Melony skipped town, heading south to the US with her friend Lara and a flower child named Daisy, finally landing in Arizona where, numbed by an endless supply of pot, she lived in a cave with a man 20 years her senior. Now she’s home, having been rescued by her brother. But since she’s never dealt with the emotional residue from her mother’s actions, she’s living in a haphazard fashion, unable to commit to anything. Carter’s novel follows 21-year-old Melony as she attempts to set her life on a coherent path, using flashbacks to take us through her earlier flight from home and responsibility following the murders, her search for refuge in the Arizona wilderness, and subsequent return to northern Ontario. This has Nothing to do With You does not hold back. This is a novel graphic with dysfunction. Melony’s father was a controlling and narcissistic bully, and over the years Melony and Matt watched helplessly as their mother withered under his relentless criticisms. In retrospect, their mother’s violent outburst did not come as much of a surprise, but this only adds to their feelings of guilt, because they’re left wondering if there was anything they could have done to prevent it. Along the way Melony learns more about the circumstances surrounding the fatal events, in the end discovering that vital details were withheld from her. And then there’s her mother, with whom she must seek a kind of peace before moving forward. This has Nothing to do With You tells an emotionally raw story of a young woman trying to rebuild her shattered life. By the end Melony has learned that running away solves nothing and that family is the cause and the cure for what ails her. Her struggle to fit the pieces back together makes for a fascinating, heartrending read. ( )