There are some rough spots in the story that could have been done better. The mystery did keep me guessing until the very end, even though I admit, I am a pretty dense mystery solver. It is sufficiently complex and the investigation itself is not absurd like that one performed by our homegirl Nora in Hush, Hush, for instance. The mystery of Patrick's assault is one of the strongest I've read in YA fiction. I will remember many of them, but one wackiest kid ever named Robert I will remember best. Each comes with a powerful and often heartbreaking story of her/his own. Shine is full of colorful and colorfully troubled characters. Which is probably not such a big surprise. You have a tightly knit community, but you also have judgment, prejudice, narrow-mindedness, church gossip, sweeping serious stuff under the rug, bowing to the richest, poverty and, of course, meth. Myracle writes Black Creek in a way that I believe - it's beautiful and it's ugly. I remember laughing and rolling my eyes at reviews praising Beautiful Creatures's portrayal of South. Cat's amateur investigation not only results in solving the crime, but helps her overcome demons of her own - demons that forced her to end her friendship with Patrick and detach herself from the community years prior. She undertakes this quest because she thinks she owes it to Patrick for her earlier betrayal of him. Small town of Black Creek, NC, is shaken by this crime, but no one seems to be interested much in solving it. Cat's childhood gay friend Patrick is brutally assaulted - hit with a baseball bat, tied to a gas pump with a fuel nozzle stuffed in his mouth, with words Suck this, faggot written on his bare chest in blood. Shine is most and foremost a story about small-town bigotry. I haven't read that series, but it's pretty safe to say Shine is nothing like those stories about girls texting each other (or whatever they do). I only know Lauren Myracle's name in connection with her ttyl books.

Shine by lauren myracle summary