Synopsis
Owen, Frank, Audrey, and Jin-Ae have one thing in common: they all want to die. When they meet online after each attempts suicide and fails, the four teens make a deadly pact: they will escape together on a summer road trip to visit the sites of celebrity suicides...and at their final destination, they will all end their lives. As they drive cross-country, bonding over their dark impulses, sharing their deepest secrets and desires, living it up, hooking up, and becoming true friends, each must decide whether life is worth living—or if there's no turning back.
"Crash Into Me puts readers in the driver's seat with four teens teetering on the edge of suicide. But will their cross country odyssey push them all the way over? Only the final page turn will tell, in Albert Borris's finely-crafted tale of friendship forged from a desperate need of connection. An exceptional first novel." —Ellen Hopkins, bestselling author of Crank
“Take a bathroom break and be sure you have a few free hours because from the moment you open this book you're going to be on the ultimate heartbreaking, poignant road trip to a place you never thought you'd go.” —Todd Strasser, bestselling author of Give a Boy a Gun
Publishers Weekly
In this powerful debut, Borris follows a group of teenagers, each of whom has attempted suicide. Jin-Ae (a studious lesbian), Frank (a dejected sports lover), Nirvana-obsessed Audrey and lonely narrator Owen meet in a chat room and make a pact to take a cross-country “Celebrity Suicide Road Trip,” stopping at the graves of Hunter S. Thompson, Kurt Cobain and others (“We're visiting our suicide family—our people,” says Owen). They plan to kill themselves when they reach Death Valley. The well-developed characters have distinct reasons and histories that led to their earlier suicide attempts (a breakup, the death of a sibling). Their conversations over the weeks are tense, candid and often tempered with snarky humor: “Nothing like a four-way suicide pact to get you going in the morning,” says Jin-Ae. Interspersed with chat-room flashbacks and Top 10 lists, Owen's delicate and insightful narrative voice carries the novel: “I suppose it doesn't matter what form love takes; maybe we just need to take it when it comes.” It's a strikingly real account of an improvised family and the ways people change and grow. Ages 14–up. (July)