Caring is Creepy by David Zimmerman

by:  David Zimmerman
published by:  Soho Press
publish date:  April 3, 2013

Fifteen-year-old Lynn Marie Sugrue is doing her best to make it through a difficult summer. Her mother works long hours as a nurse, and Lynn suspects that her mother’s pill-popping boyfriend has enlisted her in his petty criminal enterprises. Lynn finds refuge in online flirtations, eventually meeting up with a troubled young soldier, Logan Loy, and inviting him home. When he’s forced to stay over in a storage space accessible through her closet, and the Army subsequently lists him as AWOL, she realizes that he’s the one thing in her life that she can control. Meanwhile, her mother’s boyfriend is on the receiving end of a series of increasingly violent threats, which places Lynn squarely in the cross-hairs.

Lynn Marie lives with her single mother that doesn't seem to notice that her daughter spends all her time drinking, smoking and messing with people's heads online.  Lynn Marie's mom is getting both of them involved in a narcotics deal that's going to go terribly wrong.  However, Lynn has plenty of problems of her own.  She hooks up with a soldier online and meets him in person.  When he decides to go AWOL, Lynn takes him in and realizes that he has some serious problems and she likes taking care of him a little too much.

This book is one of the more seriously messed up stories I've listened to this year.  That said, it was a pretty great book, if you like that kinda thing.   Lynn Marie and her friends are weird and do crazy things.  Her mom is a mess and is never around.  Logan is suffering from some kind of mental breakdown and the idea of Lynn holding him captive in her closet is so bizarre.   Listening to the audiobook, I kept thinking it sounds like a really freaky Joshilyn Jackson book, like that real good Southern fiction, but dark in a Gillian Flynn kinda way.  Like if those two got together and had a book baby.

Obviously this book won't be for everybody.  It's dark and really weird, but if that's what you're into, this book is for you.