Bleed (Laurie Faria Stolarz, 2006)
Bleed is the first set of short stories I've read this year. Each one is a first-person account from a different teen and the stories are interconnected. As you might expect, some stories work better than others. All the kids are messed up and I actively disliked some of them. Nicole, whose story opens the book is pretty sympathetic, and I felt terrible for poor Sadie. I also liked Sean, but the rest of them range from horrible to criminally stupid. I especially hated Mearl, who speaks in an affected and dippy way, talking about auras and calling people "wonderfully crimson." I didn't like this book, but it was all I had on the Denver-Seattle flight, so I finished it.
