Every year, the Ontario Library Association selects a fistful of books to nominate for their Forest of Reading awards. Each award is aimed at an age range, and schools across the province have their kids read some of them and vote on their favourite.
Last year, I read the Silver Birch titles. This year, I’m trying to read through the White Pine titles, for grades 9-12 with my teen group at the library. This is my first of the bunch. 
Lesley Anne Cowan
Puffin Canada
ISBN: 978 0 14 317393 9
Melissa is angry at the world, not to mention her mother, and seems locked in a pattern of self-destructive behaviour that is helping her avoid dealing with it. She has coated herself in attitude, and fills the voids with drugs and sex so that only the two things she loves the most can affect her – her job at the vet clinic and her boyfriend Michael, who she feels she can be real with. When Michael leaves, she throws herself more deeply seeking oblivion.
Eventually, she goes too far, and ends up hospitalized. Forced to accept help, she finally relaxed and allows herself to face some of the root problems with the help she’s given. It’s the beginning of a healing and a new approach to life, and she even lets herself not only let go of Michael, but start to hope and dream for herself.
It took me a while to get into this book, I think largely because I didn’t like the main character, who narrates her own story. She’d show glimpses of the girl she could be, but often insisted on her own badness and the crumminess of her own life in a way I found irritating. Still I think there are teens who would not be annoyed by this, but want to know more about her, or in some cases, relate to her opinions. I felt that this part perhaps went on a bit longer than it needed to, before things started to change. By the end, though, I felt that the author had steered her into a better place and better attitude in a way that felt natural and neither too fast nor too forced – something that will kill a happy ending for a teen novel in a hurry. Everything was not solved and perfect at the end, but rather, the novel ends on a note of dawning hope that hits just right.