THE TRUTH ABOUT TWELVE

Consumed with guilt over the accidental death of her little sister and embarrassed by the poor living conditions and emotional fragility of her badly battered family, Lindy Perkins weaves a web of lies at her new, upscale school, then slowly, inexorably gets tangled in the sticky threads of her own falsehoods. It’s a masterful performance, and the read is agonizingly suspenseful as the author gradually increases both the familial and social pressure on her fiercely struggling, down-but-not-willing-to-be-out heroine. Golding doesn’t reveal Lindy’s terrible secret until near the end of the story. The revelation doesn’t quite match the buildup, and because it’s almost at the conclusion, the near-happy ending feels rushed. But her depiction of the “crazy upside-down roller-coaster ride” dynamics of 12—the friendships, rivalries, crushes, and little and big social slights—is almost unbearably real as is her sympathetic understanding of the human condition. (Fiction. 10-12)