346 pages
Published February 12th by Philomel Books
Josie Moraine is the daughter of a prostitute. She lives in New Orleans, works two jobs – one in a bookstore and the other as a cleaner in her mother’s brothel – and dreams of going to college, far, far away. Her mother is a mostly horrible excuse for a human being and, strangely, it is her mothers madame, Willie, who is more of a mother figure to Josie.
One day, Josie is intrigued by a customer she serves at the bookstore. When he ends up dead not long after, she tries to find out what happened. Especially when it seems that she is already entwined with the death.
I bought this book as an afterthought in one of my excessive (but necessary) Book Depository orders. When I got it in the mail, the first thing that I noticed was that it was the same author as Between Shades of Gray, one of those books that I’ve been meaning to read for a while now. That fact kind of bumped it up the ‘to read’ list, and I got straight into it.
Josie is a great, strong character. Very human. She makes mistakes and ends up in trouble and falls in love and has unlikely friends. She’s one of those ‘rise above’ types. Obviously, as the daughter of a prostitute, she hasn’t had an easy life – kids teased her as a child, and now, as a seventeen year old woman, people still judge her and expect her to be just like her mother.
It’s just fantastic. If you are after a young adult novel that is more mature and less shallow than a lot of the stuff that’s out there, then this is for you.
The Creased Spine. 