A KISS IN THE DARK

Anything can happen in the dark, and in this case, white high school senior Macy is the confused victim of a kiss-and-run.

All she knows is that the kisser is a boy who whispered her name, and by the time the lights come back on, the mystery guy is gone with the wind. Is it a coincidence that earlier the same day someone anonymously posted a junior-year photo of Macy goofing around with her former guy pals, Joel and Ben? Are the two events—the photo’s appearance on the school’s internal social network and the kiss—related? Where does her ex–best friend, Meredith, fit? Do these events have anything to do with the homecoming fire that brought an end to those friendships last year? Macy’s first-person, present-tense narration switches between junior and senior years, the former leading up to the fire, and the latter taking place in the present. The unveiling of the who, what, and where is gradually done rather than being lifted all at once. Macy’s current best friend, Jadie, calls out the kiss as an “assault,” but Macy doesn’t see it that way; although she knows she should agree, she enjoyed it, and it sparked her curiosity—a detail that will probably divide readers the way it divides the friends. White people make up the majority of characters. Jadie was adopted from China as a baby, and her crush is a “hot black quarterback.”

Readers who crave romance with real depth should look elsewhere.