Ferocity Summer

March 15, 2012
A troubled teen tries to understand how her life has hit rock bottom in this clumsily executed, issue-cluttered novel. Seventeen-year-old Scilla lives in a low-income dump, her best friend, Willow, is a drug addict and she keeps making out with Willow's drug-dealing brother, Randy, even though she suspects she might be gay. In addition, she killed a woman while driving a speedboat drunk last summer. Her trial is coming up, and she might get a deal if she agrees to trade information on Randy's drug connections, but first she'll have to survive an attempted convenience-store robbery, a mob panicked by lightning at a concert and a multiple-vehicle car accident. Parts of Scilla's history essay on Sherman's March and anecdotes about a fictional designer drug named Ferocity muddy the plotline even further. Scilla's cliche-ridden, unrealistically self-aware voice is didactic at best and doesn't even begin to approximate how a teenager speaks at worst: "I've discovered a world that can't be experienced by those who stick to the straight and narrow, and I like this world immensely at times.... Peer pressure is a difficult thing to resist, mostly because in all of us, there is a part that has no desire to resist." While peer pressure may be difficult to resist, this novel is not. (Fiction. 14 & up)

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May 1, 2012

Gr 10 Up-Scilla Davis realizes that bad decision after bad decision has forced her into a toxic descent. Her absent father, bitter mom, feelings of alienation, drinking and drug use, plummeting grades, and loveless sex life have turned the 17-year-old into a confused and self-doubting teenager. Her freefall ends with a substance-fueled boating accident that has fatal results. Now, as Scilla waits for her trial, she watches her friend Willow, also culpable in the tragedy, plunge into heavy-duty drug abuse. An FBI agent offers her a way to reduce charges if Scilla helps with identifying the dealer pushing "Ferocity," a new designer drug that can short-circuit a user's brain. If she wants to save herself, she'll have to expose her hook-up partner (a low-level dealer) and Willow, his sister. Because of her failing grade in history, Scilla needs to write a paper on General Sherman and the parallels she draws between his life and hers are more distracting than edifying. Choppy sentences reflect Scilla's emotionally exhausting panic as she continues to sink deeper and deeper. Despite clumsy similes, some clunky writing, and parts that strain credulity, Grosso's dark effort will be in hot demand by some older teens.-Susan Riley, Mamaroneck Public Library, NY

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