~Criss Cross~

-by Lynne Rae Perkins

I felt deja vu during the beginning of this book. I beleive I picked it up before and just never finished it; I am sure of it. I wouldn't have remembered such fine details about it, and I'm positive there isn't another book out there like this one.

It was put on my "read" pile two weeks ago. I just never got around to writing something about it. Strangely, I liked it. It was slow paced, and the metaphors were already on my nerves, but something about the way the characters talked to each other and thought about things made me read with more interest. I felt like part of my childhood that I had missed or forgotten was being lived out in the pages.

Those summer nights where you and your friends sit on the concrete step outside your front door or on the dirty curb by the mailbox licking green Popsicles because all the red and orange ones were already eaten, talking about things like how the clouds looked that morning or how every place looks different, even if it's only a town away. The houses are closer together, and there are streams to play in, and there is garbage to pick up.

One of my favorite things about the novel is that the friends bounce ideas off of each other. Even if it sounds stupid on paper, the speaker in the book is not told so, they just continue talking about the subject, however random it is. I've always wanted to do that, but whenever I breach a subject different from the usual ones (school, boys, golf, boys, hair, boys, what's going on later), I get a weird look and I don't bring it up again. I'm not saying I don't like to talk about the usual stuff ( ;] ), but it was great to read a story where the characters weren't afraid to say what they were thinking, and when they did, it made them think more.