Love & Leftovers (review)

Marcie and her friends are what they call the Leftovers, since they are "too smart to be jocks . . . too pretty to be losers . . . too nice to be popular," but that's okay, because they have one another. When Marcie's dad leaves her mom for a man, however, Marcie's mom decides they have to leave Idaho to spend the summer in her family's cottage in New Hampshire. Come fall, they're staying, and Marcie finds herself alone at a new school. Not wanting to be a Leftover on her own, she goes for popular, and meets a boy who seems more interested in her than her emo-rocker boyfriend in Idaho ever did. While her mom fades into depression, Marcie sorts out all of the emotions that one could expect to arise in the aftermath of finding out your father's gay, leaving your friends, and boyfriend behind, discovering the pleasures of a physical relationship for the first time, and coping with a mother who can't always get out of bed. Her cries of the heart are captured in effective and affecting free verse as she questions why her boyfriend, whom she loves and who loves her, never seemed to want to touch her the way this new boy does; is he gay like her dad, making her like her mother, or is she more like her dad, willing to cheat on someone she loves without caring whom she hurts? Is she being a good friend if she keeps some things private? Is it wrong to try to escape feeling bad by doing something that feels good? Mostly, she just longs to go home, but when that happens, she finds things aren't as simple as picking up where she left off. Her story is thus as credible as her voice, and readers will relate to her complicated but accessible heartbreak, as she, like her parents, makes mistakes and struggles to fix them.