Stay With Me is an answer to a writing friend of mine's lament that he finds a lack of emotional depth and pain when reading YA.

So blurrrrrghhhh to him.

This had all the emotional pain you could want. It's about a teenager who is trying to figure out her life after a beloved older half sister commits suicide. The protagonist, Leila, must figure out all her relationships with various family members, what she wants to do with her own life, sex with a boy she doesn't really want as a boyfriend anymore, and on top of all that.....dyslexia.

If my romantic button isn't pushed when reading these relationship focused YA novels, usually I get a little bored. But Garret Freyman-Weyr has this way of making every relationship Leila has; with other half-sister, cousin, dead mother of her half sisters, father, etc. all have that immediacy and anxiousness and joy and sorrow that usually surrounds romantic relationships.

So it was good. Recommended.