You Go First by Erin Entrada Kelly (review)

Twelve-year-old Charlotte is in Philadelphia, where her father has just been rushed to the hospital with a heart attack; eleven-year-old Ben is in Louisiana, where his parents have just informed him they're getting a divorce. Charlotte's crisis precipitates a drift from her best friend; Ben's sadness accentuates his perpetual isolation at school, where he's increasingly bullied. Charlotte and Ben have been locked in intense but friendly online Scrabble combat for several months, and it's where they feel their best, most competent selves as the rest of their lives tumble out of control. Kelly writes with sympathetic gravity of young people who feel lost in a world where they thought they knew the way. Both as motif and device, Scrabble remains subtle—it doesn't lead Ben and Charlotte to become besties who pour confidences in each other's ears, and in fact there's painful authenticity in the fact that, when they graduate to talking on the phone, they dissemble and avoid what's really bothering them. Both of them are credibly brainy kids who struggle to find their people, with Ben a particularly fine portrait of the youngster who has absorbed the rules for adult dynamics but fails to understand that middle school is completely different. Readers will be glad to see that both them will manage to remain themselves and be okay. DS