Never Let You Go by Emma Carlson Berne (review)

A year ago, Megan drunkenly made out with the boyfriend of her best friend, Anna, but the girls subsequently made up, and now they’re spending the summer working on at a farm together. Anna immediately sets her sights on Jordan, another summer worker, but he resists her aggressive overtures and prefers Megan instead. Though Megan tries to resist, not wanting to hurt Anna again, the attraction between her and Jordan is too strong. Once again, Anna appears to forgive, but that appearance quickly dissolves into psychotic revenge. The problem, in terms of plot and character development, is that Anna’s descent from normal teen into crazed woman scorned happens entirely too quickly, lacking sufficient hints and warning signs of her instability. All of the pieces are in place, including a mysterious incident that caused a rift between Anna and her aunt, but the narrative doesn’t draw the elements together into a sense of threat or foreboding that raises Megan’s or the reader’s suspicions; even when horrible things start to happen, Anna has to explain herself and what she’s done, since Megan is taken completely by surprise. The romance between Jordan and Megan is compelling, though, and the climax is action-filled and reminiscent of some of romance’s best villainesses gone wild (think Alex Forrest in Fatal Attraction); readers who persevere past the lead-in may still enjoy the payoff.