The Fall of Lisa Bellow

Meredith Oliver is on the floor at the Deli Barn, next to Lisa Bellow, the most popular girl in school, and there's a gun pointed at them both. The gunman tells Lisa to come with him, and he drives away, with Lisa.

The author did what I thought would be impossible: she wrote an immensely captivating story from the point-of-view of the person that got away.

There are lots of other small but equally powerful storylines in this book—a baseball-proficient brother who is hit in the eye with a ball and goes partially blind, a mom who isn't comfortable with her role or her life, Lisa's friends who oddly become Meredith's friends—and it makes for a wonderful novel.