She Treads Softly: American Girl

Sunday, October 8, 2023

American Girl

American Girl by Wendy Walker
10/17/23; 359 pages
Blackstone Publishing

American Girl by Wendy Walker is a very highly recommended psychological thriller with an unforgettable teenage narrator.

Charlie Hudson, an autistic seventeen-year-old, has a list of rules and a plan for her life. Her goal is to leave Sawyer, PA. Charlie has already been accepted at MIT, she is the top student at her high school and should be a shoe-in for the town's scholarship. As her stepfather won't give her any money to attend school, she has been working every hour she can at the Triple S sandwich shop since she was fourteen . She has a spreadsheet and a plan, saving everything for school.

When Clay (Coop) Cooper the loathsome shop owner and small town mogul, is found dead outside his house, the police investigation determines he was killed elsewhere. The problem is that Charlie is caught on the store camera after closing hiding under the counter on the night the murder occurred. Charlie refuses to say what she saw or heard because several people close to her have motives and she is going to protect those she loves. Charlie's silence, however, may be putting her in danger.

Charlie is a wonderful, fully realized, unforgettable character. The plot unfolds through her first-person narrative so readers can follow her thoughts, rules, and deductions as the sense of urgency and danger increase. She is a very sympathetic character. Clearly she is protecting those she loves while putting herself into harms way and a suspect herself.

American Girl is an admirably written, un-put-downable thriller that held my complete attention throughout the entire novel. There are facts Charlie is not divulging and twists along the way as more information is carefully released. What seems a simple case is much more complex and the character of Charlie makes it a remarkable, memorable psychological thriller.

Disclosure: My digital review copy was courtesy of Blackstone Publishing via NetGalley.

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John Updike's six rules for reviewing:

1. Try to understand what the author wished to do, and do not blame him for not achieving what he did not attempt.

2. Give him enough direct quotation--at least one extended passage--of the book's prose so the review's reader can form his own impression, can get his own taste.

3. Confirm your description of the book with quotation from the book, if only phrase-long, rather than proceeding by fuzzy precis.

4. Go easy on plot summary, and do not give away the ending.

5. If the book is judged deficient, cite a successful example along the same lines, from the author's oeuvre or elsewhere. Try to understand the failure. Sure it's his and not yours?

To these concrete five might be added a vaguer sixth, having to do with maintaining a chemical purity in the reaction between product and appraiser.....Review the book, not the reputation.... Better to praise and share than blame and ban. The communion between reviewer and his public is based upon the presumption of certain possible joys in reading, and all our discriminations should curve toward that end.