Marlena

"Julie Buntin understands that a brief but intense best-friendship is not necessarily a coming-of-age tale, but rather an origin story. Fifteen-year-old Cat moves to rural Michigan and strikes up a friendship with the beautiful and charismatic Marlena. We know that a year later, Marlena will drown (that’s not a spoiler, I promise). Cat is now a 30-something Brooklynite who is pulling at the threads of her time Marlena, examining the ways a wonderful, magnetic friendship can also be treacherous and devastating. Reading this book wrecked me, but now I can’t stop thinking about how my own teenage friends shaped me."