Acclaimed short-story writer Kevin Canty (A Stranger in This World) makes his debut as a novelist with this finely realized teen-angst love story. Kenny and Junie, two 17-year-olds from considerably different varieties of broken homes, find comfort, sex and heartbreak with each other over the course of their final year in high school. While the territory is familiar, Canty approaches it as if it had never been covered before. This freshness, accomplished largely through the unsparing portrayal of the story's protagonists, gives the book an edge missing from most depictions of teenage existence. Canty's claustrophobic suburban houses are populated by incredibly self-involved—though still sympathetic—characters with none of the moral simplicity of an after-school special or an episode of 90210. If exorcising the demons of youth is the inevitable task of any first novel, Canty should sleep better these days.