WATCHING TRAFFIC

An unexpected romance opens up new possibilities for a young woman who's just graduated from high school in this debut novel set in small-town Ontario.

Wry, smart, 18-year-old Emily Robinson is already missing her best friends, Lincoln and Melissa, who are soon bound for Australia and Halifax respectively. She's spent years trying to live down the notoriety that came from being found covered in blood in a motel room with her mother's dead body after she committed suicide when Emily was 3. When she meets a handsome newcomer to town, Tyler, she glimpses ways that she might rewrite both her past and her future. The tightly woven friendship among Emily, Lincoln, and Melissa brims with funny dialogue and is convincingly complicated in ways both platonic and not; the trio's habit of drinking heavily together often only exacerbates these issues. Emily's attraction to Tyler is magnetic and often steamy, but, sweetly and realistically, it’s also more than just physical, which will have readers rooting for them. It's made clear that one character is gay, and though there is little specific mention of their ethnic backgrounds, the descriptions of the appearances of several of the main characters imply that they are white.

A short, slice-of-life–style story that fans of literary fiction will find satisfying.