IF YOU'RE LUCKY

A deeply intuitive teen struggles to discover the truth behind her brother’s death.

Georgia, a 17 year-old aspiring pastry chef in Northern California, hero-worshiped her carefree, globe-trotting older brother, Lucky, whose death in a surfing accident in Australia comes as a world-shattering event. It triggers an emotional avalanche for Georgia, whose life goes from routinized and responsible to grief-stricken, unspooling into paranoia. Prinz carefully plants allusions to events in Georgia’s past and to her present medication schedule, so that the revelation of her schizophrenia diagnosis is not at all surprising. When one of Lucky’s friends, a handsome charmer introducing himself as Fin, shows up for a memorial party and stays, everyone waves away her suspicion as just so much “weird” behavior. As Fin gets a job in town, starts taking Lucky’s dog for walks, and even woos Lucky’s girlfriend, Georgia questions Fin’s presence and grows convinced that he is responsible for Lucky’s death. Her investigation—including an unwise insistence on discontinuing her medication against her doctor’s orders and relying on the ensuing auditory and visual hallucinations to guide her—will force readers to wonder about their own possible biases against taking the concerns of mentally ill people seriously. An author's note provides further information and resources on schizophrenia.

Prinz produces a solid page-turner. (Thriller. 14-18)