THE SEVEN TORMENTS OF AMY AND CRAIG (A LOVE STORY)

Two high school seniors weather a stormy year.

The last person Craig thought he’d be going out with is Amy Carlson, the Youth in Government president whose bright future seems to be a given. Craig hasn’t thought much of his future, aside from a desire to be as far away and completely different from his parents and twin sister as possible. Regardless, circumstances intervene, and Amy and Craig begin to date...then break up...then date again...and then break up again. Over the course of a turbulent school year the lovebirds flit in and out of each other’s lives. Zolidis (White Buffalo: A Play in Two Acts, 2014, etc.), a playwright making his novel debut, splinters and shuffles the narrative, hopping around in time so we see a couple of breakups before we ever see Craig and Amy get together. This technique takes a few pages to get used to, but Craig’s blistering humor and reluctant optimism are so endearing that readers will settle into the groove of things. Told through Craig’s perspective, Amy’s character isn’t fully fleshed out till later in the text. Laudably, these developments spring organically from the narrative. There’s nothing startlingly fresh here, but there’s something to be said for a good example of the genre, and this title certainly fills the bill. Amy and Craig are white; there is some diversity in secondary characters.

A charming, funny love story.