Simon Pulse, 2011
ISBN-13: 978-1416994817
Available: New
Kendall Fletcher is one of just 212 people who live in the community of Cryer’s Cross. Her junior year ended with the disappearance of a girl from her class, and it’s a relief to be starting over with a new school year. Maybe, she thinks, the familiar routines of school will relieve her obsessive thoughts about what happened to Tiffany Quinn. Kendall has OCD- obsessive compulsive disorder- and once she starts thinking about something, she can’t let go. The OCD also forces her into repeating little rituals, and one of those rituals is tidying up her classroom every morning, which includes moving every desk to a specific place in the room. Kendall knows every one of those desks, and has even memorized the graffiti on each one. The appearance of two obviously Hispanic kids at the high school, Jacian and Marlena, feeds into Kendall’s suspicions about Tiffany’s disappearance, which only increase when her best friend/boyfriend, Nico, disappears as well. As time passes, though, Kendall discovers just how unfounded her suspicions are.
Cryer’s Cross is a really creepy book. From early on you know there is somebody (or several people) who are very, very, angry… and who are seriously wrong in the head. Their thoughts appear at intervals, jagged on the page. The story is told in first person, from Kendall’s point of view, but Kendall doesn’t seem like the most reliable narrator. When you consider her obsession over both disappearances, the mysterious words she finds on the desks, her relationship with the missing Nico, and her irrational compulsions, she’s a pretty good suspect, and we really don’t know who else might have a motive, since Kendall, our viewpoint character, isn’t familiar with all the secrets of Cryer’s Cross. Suffice it to say that the supernatural is involved, and some terrifying (if logistically difficult to believe) things happen. It’s gripping, if horrifying, in both a physical and psychological sense. What saves Kendall from the same fate as the others is her OCD. When it comes down to it, her “disability” is the key to her survival, and the trust she’s developed with Jacian means she’s discovered and taken to safety before it’s too late. Why all of this happened is a complete mystery that’s only revealed at the end… but is it the end? It makes me shiver just to think about that possibility.
I give major props to Lisa McMann for her sensitive portrayal of someone with an invisible disability. I don’t think I have ever read a description of a character with OCD who was as fully developed and three-dimensional as Kendall is. Yet, Cryer’s Cross is not a “message novel”. It is a horror story. The way Kendall’s personality, and her OCD, shape the story is organic- without it, the story would have a rather abrupt end- but it’s not the focus of the book. I hope this will be a trend in YA fiction- but even if it isn’t, I will definitely be seeking out the work of Lisa McMann. Highly, highly recommended.
Contains: violence, mild kissing
Reviewed by: Kirsten Kowalewski