WILDER

Jason Wilder, a senior at Unionville High, is broke and isolated after a town feud has flared into something serious, and he desperately needs to tell you his story.

"I was in the Rubber Room for my own protection. Meili got there by breaking Laura Fenton's middle finger."

The high school's Rubber Room is delinquent-proof: plastic windows, stubby pencils, and near-constant supervision. When Meili - or Melissa, as she calls herself - walks in, Jason's life is dramatically altered.

As Jason and Meili pass notes and steal moments of conversation, he learns fragments of her past: her father, a witness in a corruption case in Hong Kong, sent her to hide in rural Unionville. Jason shares his own secrets - he is on probation for arson, and his alcoholic mother has taken off to Florida with her boyfriend. No one is supposed to know he lives alone.

Jason falls for Meili warily, then fiercely. When her identity is exposed, Jason hides her at his rundown house. Asshe plots a dangerous path backto her family and her affluent life abroad, Jason dreams ofleaving, too, escaping his enemies, his past, his poverty and hiscrushing loneliness. But when menacing people from Meili's past comelooking for her, Jason is forced to confront his true self and the limits of violence.

Twisty, authentic, and flawlessly written, WILDER combines the palpable longing of ELEANOR & PARK with the razor-sharp focus of GONE GIRL. This novel is, ultimately, a blow to the heart.