Not Like You (review)

Yet another move is no surprise to fifteen-year-old Kayla, who's accustomed to being dragged along whenever her alcoholic mother takes a fancy to a new destination or a new man. This time they're in small-town New Mexico, where Kayla's mother has been given cheap rent in a mobile home, and where Kayla, as usual, finds work that will serve as the family's economic mainstay. On one of her dog-walking jobs, she finds Remy, a sexy twenty-four-year-old musician (she tells him she's almost eighteen) who makes her feel important, wanted, and valued in a way that her home life never has. This is a strongly written portrait of a sympathetic young woman who isn't quite as matured by her life as she thinks. Characterization is acute throughout: the picture of Kayla's mother, who tries to be better but fails so repeatedly that Kayla would be a fool to trust her, and who breezily helps herself to her daughter's income, is sharp but not cruel, and Remy isn't an evil charlatan but a self-indulgent dreamer a little too eager to take what's offered to him. It's also absolutely believable that Kayla would yearn for escape from such a situation, even to the point of deceiving herself about her own behavior; what she deserves, though, is real possibility rather than an impulsive flight of fancy, and readers will be glad to see her heading toward a better future at the end.