Your Constant Star by Brenda Hasiuk (review)

When her old neighbor Bev contacts her from out of the blue to share the news of her pregnancy and ask her help, teenaged Faye acquiesces without knowing why, much as she did when the two were children. Struggling to reconcile her identity as a Chinese-Canadian adoptee—and the compliant, overachieving image that accompanies it—with her resentment toward her well-meaning parents, Faye has her own complicated reasons for going along with pushy, daring Bev. As they spend more time together, with Faye accompanying Bev on visits to potential adoptive parents and finding herself inexplicably drawn to Bev’s perpetually stoned, joyriding boyfriend, Mannie, it becomes clear that they’re all using each other for something, though they don’t know what. Taking on the voice of each of these three teens as they push for more from themselves and their lives, Hasiuk skillfully creates complex and believable characters, who are by turns cruel and compassionate, alienating and sympathetic. She understands the blind groping of adolescence, along with its mixing of affection and contempt toward loved ones and occasionally crippling, occasionally empowering uncertainties, and examines this fumbling (and its potential for disaster) in an insightful but unsentimental light. With its restrained but uncondescending portrayal of teen pregnancy, drug use, and mental illness alongside small interpersonal cruelties and baffling but resonant adolescent behavior, this will appeal to teens looking for other souls asking questions without answers.