Teen Fiction

Criminal

Name: Criminal
Author: Terra Elan McVoy
ISBN: 9781442421622

by Terra Elan McVoy

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Overview

A searing and gripping read that explores the depths of desperation true love can inspire, from the author of Being Friends with Boys.

Nikki’s life is far from perfect, but at least she has Dee. Her friends tell her that Dee is no good, but Nikki can’t imagine herself without him. He’s hot, he’s dangerous, he has her initials tattooed over his heart, and she loves him more than anything. There’s nothing Nikki wouldn’t do for Dee. Absolutely nothing.

So when Dee pulls Nikki into a crime—a crime that ends in murder—Nikki tells herself that it’s all for true love. Nothing can break them apart. Not the police. Not the arrest that lands Nikki in jail. Not even the investigators who want her to testify against him.

But what if Dee had motives that Nikki knew nothing about? Nikki’s love for Dee is supposed to be unconditional…but even true love has a limit. And Nikki just might have reached hers.

About the Author, Terra Elan McVoy

Terra Elan McVoy has held a variety of jobs centered around reading and writing, from managing an independent children’s bookstore, to teaching writing classes, and even answering fan mail for Captain Underpants. Terra lives and works in the same Atlanta neighborhood where her novels After the Kiss, Being Friends with Boys, and Pure are set. She is also the author of The Summer of Firsts and Lasts and Criminal. To learn more, visit TerraElan.com and follow Terra on Twitter at @TerraMcVoy.

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Editorials

Publishers Weekly

Like McVoy’s previous books, a romance is central to this hard-hitting story, but the author’s fans may be surprised by just how toxic that relationship is. Readers are immediately plunged into the world of trouble that Nikki, 18, and her 20-year-old boyfriend, Dee, are in as they fabricate an alibi following Dee’s murder of a local deputy. Nikki’s unstable home life (her mother is an abusive drug addict) drove her to drop out of school to work at a hair salon, move in with single mother Bird (Nikki’s only real friend), and bury herself in an intensely sexual and unhealthy relationship with Dee. Nikki gets a rude awakening when the police close in, and Dee turns on her, leaving her alone and facing painful decisions. It’s a dark, devastating, and realistic portrait of a girl in over her head in more ways than one. What McVoy (Being Friends with Boys) gets so powerfully right in this novel is the way that love can descend like a fog, impairing one’s judgment and obscuring the truth. Ages 14–up. (May)

Kirkus Reviews

Nikki would do anything for her boyfriend, Dee. But, when he talks her into committing a crime with him then leaves her to take the fall, Nikki begins to think that even true love has its limits. Even though all of her friends tell her that Dee is trouble, Nikki cannot seem to pull away from her moody and sometimes violent boyfriend. Nikki's stepfather is in jail, her mother is strung out on drugs, and her grandmother is dead. Only her friend Bird, with whom she lives, offers any real stability. Unfortunately, Bird hates Dee, forcing Nikki to choose. Even after the police reveal that Dee's "N" tattoo might actually be for another girl and Nikki is imprisoned, she defends her troubled boyfriend. Graphic sex, violence and foul language, while appropriate to the circumstances, overwhelm the tale. Even though it is clear that Nikki is lost in her own addiction--to Dee, not drugs--her continued reluctance to see Dee for what he is becomes wearisome. McVoy's story of abuse and addiction lacks the subtlety and depth that this difficult topic demands. Readers who make it all the way through the story will be grateful their incarceration is finally ended. (Fiction. 14 & up)