Shine by Lauren Myracle6/1/2023 ![]() Patrick was well known in his hometown of 743 residents for being “light in his loafers” or “swishy,” as some of the townspeople called him. Seventeen-year-old Patrick Truman has been beaten and bound to a guardrail outside a convenience store with an antigay slur written in blood across his chest. Before Chapter 1 has even begun, that subject is revealed with a newspaper clipping. Its end pages are jet black, a not-so-subliminal indication of the novel’s dark subject matter. ![]() “Shine” is dramatic in both content and presentation. It just does so in literary prose, following a 16-year-old girl as she attempts to solve an antigay hate crime in a small North Carolina town where methamphetamine use is rampant and illiteracy and unemployment rates run even higher. Myracle’s latest, “Shine,” continues to trade in the forbidden. Simultaneously titillating and taboo, alluring yet off-limits, underage sex and illegal drug use are an irresistible combination that is a sort of calling card for Lauren Myracle, a young adult author who has not only topped the New York Times bestseller list with her blunt depictions of modern adolescence but also the American Library Assn.’s list of most challenged books for “ttyl,” “ttfn” and “l8r, g8r,” a trilogy written in text messages. ![]() When it comes to sex and drugs, teen interest and parental tolerance tend to run in opposite directions. ![]()
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