Burnout by Adrienne Maria Vrettos

Burnout by Adrienne Maria Vrettos 
(McElderry Books, 2011)



Summary from publisher:
On the day after Halloween, Nan wakes up in a subway car.  She is not dreaming.  She doesn't know where she's been or what she's done.  She's missing a whole day from her life.  And she's wearing skeleton makeup and a too-small Halloween costume.
Nan is not supposed to wake up in places like this anymore.  She's different now, far from that dangerously drunk girl who hit bottom in the Nanapocalypse.  She needs to find out what happened to her, and fast.  As she tries to put together the pieces of the last twenty-four hours, she flashes back to memories of her previous life.  But she would never go back to her old friends and her old ways. Would she?
The deeper Nan digs, the more disturbing things get.  This time, she may have gone one step too far.  This time, she may be a walking ghost.

I read this book in about an hour and a half one night when I couldn't sleep.  While this is not a fat book, it is an intense one; a story that would not let go of me until I had pieced together the loose ends and discovered where Nan had been on Halloween and what had happened to her.  Vrettos captures the reader on the first page, and enhances Nan's story through flashback chapters labeled as "Remembering." These flashbacks chronicle Nan's friendship with Seemy, an important part of the plot.

This is definitely a book for older readers, mostly due to the subject matter, rather than graphic descriptions of anything.  Because of the female protagonist and her decidedly female world view, this book will definitely appeal to teen girls, though there is certainly much here for boys to learn from.

I doubt I'll put this book in my seventh grade classroom library, though I will be passing it along to a high school teacher.  This is a book that deserves to be read.