Loving someone even though they’re essentially terrible doesn’t have to go with blaming the victim, especially since her resentment completely lacked any semblance of logic. She still has a chip on her shoulder because she thinks Wren ‘snitched’ after what her dad put her through and it just made me laugh that this girl is so dumb and naïve she’d blame a child because her fuck-up of a father got himself thrown in the clinker. I understand why she still loves her father even though he’s an abusive P.O.S., but actually growing up blaming Wren for being the ‘reason’ he went to prison when she was eight in ludicrous. I didn’t connect with either of them and I pretty much straight-out disliked Darra. This book is too rushed to really develop a friendship between these two girls that feels plausible or emotionally satisfying. Which you have to admit would be pretty weird, especially since the mini-van incident ended up putting Darra’s father in prison.

They both try to put the incident behind them and don’t expect to cross paths again, but then they run into each other at summer camp as teenagers. Wren spent several days frightened and hungry in Darra’s family’s garage before finally escaping. When Darra and Wren were little, Darra’s father stole Wren’s mother’s minivan unaware that the girl was hiding in the back. This brief (fairly easily to read in one sitting) teen book-in-poems is told in alternating voices by two girls connected by one traumatic incident. Hidden starts out with a interesting premise but I felt the author failed to do anything with it that would make it memorable. Sadly, this is one of those cases where a book’s cover art is way better than the book itself.

Hidden book by helen frost