Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me a copy of this book for review.
The story starts out with a girl leaving a home and traveling to find her mom in a crazy community in the desert. Two friends go to find her and a grand issue occurs.
The next section is about these boys who paint graffiti everyday. There are encounters and actions and certainly a different life style goes on in the story which to me is extreme.
The third chapter one of the boys is famous for his art. He meets one of the girls. From the beginning of the story. Their encounters are a stretched performance. Then all these characters are together from the story.
I’m having trouble writing what it is about because I just could not relate to this story or it’s characters.

Thank you to Henry Holt Books and NetGalley for this ebook (and a physical copy too!). This is a strong debut, powerful writing and well developed characters. This is a moody, intense read (or was for me!) and brought me back to that odd sense of disorientation and disconnection a lot of teens experience. I felt the plot with Judy and Meghan and IM and running away to meet someone online really captured a time in the 90s that was very real for many and the idea of the freedom of expression, of seeking independence, but then fearing some of the experiences of that freedom was so present in Caleb's story. Cassie yearning to understand herself and her mother was very powerful too. 3.5 stars

I struggled though, despite the strong prose and characters, to get engaged in the story. It was almost as if that feeling of yearning, of feeling lost and uncertain and disconnected, came across too well and it was hard to feel connected to the characters and story (like it was too much their story and I couldn't be in their world).

I still though think this is a strong book in many ways, filled with themes about identity and adolescence and connection that are worth talking about. I look forward to seeing what else Leigh N. Gallagher has to offer, her narrative voice is strong.

This novel blends the stories of five people who we first meet as teens in the 1990s and then again in 2016. Well, not all of them. Meghan and Judy run away from home in the 1990s and are shocked by something they encounter (no spoilers). Then there's 12 year old Cassie searching for her bio-mom in the Nevada desert (least realistic scenario, btw). Finally, Caleb and his little brother Miles rebel against their mother and explore Detroit while tagging buildings. It's very character driven but none of these characters engaged me. Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC. It's a coming of age story that others likely will enjoy more than I did.

The book blurb describes a lot of seemingly disparate events and characters and I looked forward to seeing how they eventually intertwined in this novel. But I don't feel like they ever really did. There are 3 parts to the novel. The first and second parts are completely different and weren't really adequately tied together and resolved in the final part.