CHEATED

Mick Salisbury just can’t win: He caught his dad cheating on his mom and he got caught cheating on his girlfriend Nicole. His only solace is the company of his two best friends, Brody, an ex-jock with serious drinking and anger-management issues, and Aaron, a quiet boy who harbors a terrible secret. The trio engages in all the usual teen delinquent activities—drinking, stealing, chasing girls—and subsequently never take any responsibility for their actions. When their binge drinking and inner rage combine one fateful night, Mick finds himself part of a horrible crime. Mick, who narrates his sad tale, is an entirely unlikable character, and while it seems that the author intended it that way, anomalous passages make him sound more like a moralistic adult than a confused and impulsive teenage boy. With a predictable plot and flat characters, this problem novel striving for intensity loses its fire by coming across as overly didactic. For a similar concept with a better execution, see Chris Lynch’s Inexcusable (2005). (Fiction. YA)