Just because you don’t touch anything doesn’t mean you are exempt. The act of watching changes what happens.

I’ve never believed in the innocent bystander. If you want something, I'll give you this: I kept thinking I was done and then realizing the next sentence was equally poignant. I copied down whole paragraphs that became extracts until it felt like I would be quoting the entire book. But with Marlena it was impossible to isolate just a sentence or two. Normally I start my reviews with a quote a nice little taster of what to expect. Īlive with an urgent, unshakable tenderness, Julie Buntin’s Marlena is an unforgettable look at the people who shape us beyond reason and the ways it might be possible to pull oneself back from the brink. Now, decades later, when a ghost from that pivotal year surfaces unexpectedly, Cat must try to forgive herself and move on, even as the memory of Marlena keeps her tangled in the past.

Within the year, Marlena is dead, drowned in six inches of icy water in the woods nearby. As the two girls turn the untamed landscape of their desolate small town into a kind of playground, Cat catalogues a litany of firsts-first drink, first cigarette, first kiss-while Marlena’s habits harden and calcify. Cat, inexperienced and desperate for connection, is quickly lured into Marlena’s orbit by little more than an arched eyebrow and a shake of white-blond hair. An electric debut novel about love, addiction, and loss the story of two girls and the feral year that will cost one her life, and define the other’s for decadesĮverything about fifteen-year-old Cat’s new town in rural Michigan is lonely and off-kilter, until she meets her neighbor, the manic, beautiful, pill-popping Marlena.

Julie buntin books