What can I say? I'm obsessed. And as we all know obsessed girls can't be held responsible for our actions.

The distinction has blurred between young adult and adult books. Some of the teen books have become more sophisticated.

How sad it was, Carmen thought, that you acted awful when you were desperately sad and hurt and wanted to be loved. How tragic then, the way everyone avoided you and tiptoed around you when you really needed them. Carmen knew this vicious predicament as well as anyone in the world. How bitter it felt when you acted badly to everyone and ended up hating yourself the most.

Because she was raw and uncertain, and she liked to keep all the messy parts of herself to herself. ... As much as Lena liked to hide the mess and display the finished product, by this point she was all mess and no product.

I allowed myself to suffer how jarringly destructive the present feels and how fragile the past.

We aren't in high school. We aren't really in our families and we aren't in our houses. Those are the places we grew up and the times we spent together, but they aren't us. If think they are, then we're lost, because times end and places are lost. We aren't any place or any time . . . We are everywhere.

She wondered again about her inclination to wish for things that made her so deeply unhappy.