Romance

So I thought this was going to be a YA novel, but once I got to the graphic seksi time about halfway though I realized it wasn't. What it was, though, was a very good and well thought out novel. High school teacher Lindsey Sloan's small Alabama town was rocked when three local churches were burned to the ground and the town's new detective, Jace, is trying to convince her that one her her students committed the crimes. Meanwhile, the school is having a rough time, grieving through multiple student suicides. The whole thing culminates in something horrific at the end of the novel.This book was dark, no doubt about that, but it was also timely. One of the suicides was committed by a high schooler who had come out to his father that he was gay. When his classmates found out, they hounded him with e-mail harassments until he decided he had no other course of action but to take his own life. It's a tragedy that hits close to home for a lot of young people these days.While the characters were a bit one-dimensional, the excitement from the plot more than made up for it. It was definitely a page-turner from the first chapter, not only because I was trying to figure out who had committed these crimes and how they were all related, but also because it was obvious Lindsey and Jace were attracted to each other. While the plot was heavy, the romance aspect of the novel helped it from getting too heavy. ( )

[The Suicide Club]: This book is about a group of intellectually "gifted" high school students who are driven by the thrill of committing crimes. It all starts with the burning down of three churches, but the stakes become higher when people start committing suicide. Are these cases related or just coincidences in this sleepy one stoplight southern town? Does this sound intriguing to you? It did to me, and then I started to read it and wished I hadn’t. The characters were like that of the cardboard standee variety; I couldn’t relate to any of them. Additionally the plot dragged along at a crippled snails’ pace. Finally, I guess due to Wilson’s prior career of writing harlequin novels; she added unnecessary details of the intimacy between the two main characters. (Although I have never read such novels before, I assume these scenes were toned down versions, but out of place nonetheless.) The pace did pick-up over the last two chapters, but I wasn’t satisfied with the motives of the perpetrators. ( )