Wicked Games by Sean Olin (review)

Now seniors, Carter and Lilah have been together ever since ninth grade, but their relationship has been turbulent in light of Lilah’s increasing instability. When Lilah melts down at a party, her friends take her home, leaving Carter free to sleep with Jules, a decision he regrets but can’t forget. Lilah starts a cyber-bullying, vandalism, and stalking campaign against Jules; heartbroken Jules breaks off all contact with Carter; when Lilah arranges a devastating public humiliation of her at graduation, a restraining order against Lilah allows Carter and Jules to finally admit their love for one another. The sensationalism doesn’t end there or even with the suspenseful climax, and the ending takes a shark-jumping turn that shocks mostly for its lack of logic and psychological credibility rather than its narrative twist. The rest of the details are staged for at least some plausibility, however, with Jules’s and Carter’s misguided attempts at protecting each other as well as their parents, occasional flashes of insight about how much they can actually help Lilah, and the limits of adult effectiveness when they finally do get involved. That said, the prose is pedestrian, and the book sets any progress made against the stigmatization of mental illness back more than a few notches while also excusing Carter and Jules as hapless victims whose behavior is justified by their attraction, making the morality cheaply convenient even for a superficial leisure read.