Narc

by Crissa-Jean Chappell

Overview

When his little sister is caught with a bag of weed, seventeen-year-old Aaron Foster takes the fall. To keep the cops from tearing his family apart, Aaron agrees to go undercover and help bust the dealer who's funneling drugs into his Miami high school. But making friends with the school's biggest players isn't easy for a waste-case loner from the wrong part of town. Stuck between the cops on one hand and a crazy party scene on the other, Aaron befriends Morgan Baskin-a cute but troubled rich girl who might be his link to the supplier. But just when he realizes he's falling for Morgan, the unbearable weight of his lies threatens to crush them both.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780738733760
Publisher:	North Star Editions
Publication date:	08/08/2012
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	288
File size:	2 MB
Age Range:	14 - 18 Years

About the Author

Crissa-Jean Chappell is the author of Total Constant Order (HarperTeen, 2007), which earned a bronze medal from the Florida Book Awards, received a VOYA “Perfect Ten,” and was named a New York Public Library “Book for the Teen Age.” She holds an interdisciplinary Ph.D. in literature, film theory, and philosophy from the University of Miami, as well as an MFA in screenwriting. Her reviews, short stories, and poems have appeared in many magazines, including Confrontation, Tatlins Tower, Broken Wrist Project, and the Southwest Review. For more than eight years, Chappell wrote a weekly film column for the Miami Sun-Post. The author lives in New York. Visit her online at CrissaJeanChappell.com.

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Editorial Reviews

"Chappell does a great job of showing readers a gritty Miami most people don't think about when they think of South Beach and sunshine, and populating it with realistic characters. Really great book." —Trish Doller, author of Something Like Normal

From the Publisher

Taking the fall for his little sister leads to big trouble for 17-year-old Aaron Foster. Aaron is the quiet kid, the one who blends into the wallpaper and who stays out of trouble. But when his sister is caught with a small bag of (his) marijuana, Aaron is coerced into signing up for the police informant program and tasked with unmasking a high school dealer. Forcing himself into the right social sphere isn't easy, and Aaron's interrogation skills leave something to be desired. Labeled a snitch in the swampy ecosystem of his Florida high school, Aaron finds that untangling interpersonal connections is complicated at best, and it becomes nearly impossible when he develops feelings for one of his prime suspects. Though she sticks with the Florida setting that served her so well in her first novel, Total Constant Order (2007), Chappell suffers from the sophomore slump, with a thin premise, emotionally dull characters and a slow pace. That the police would recruit a withdrawn and disconnected student to become a social informer stretches credulity. Brief references to Aaron's drug use and panic attacks constitute his characterization, and secondary characterization is equally scanty. Tension never develops, even as Aaron wades into the murky territory of drug sales and dealers. Falls flat. (Fiction. 14 & up)

Kirkus Reviews