As Simple As Snow

Book: As Simple As Snow
Author: Gregory Galloway
Audience: High School to Adult
In a Nutshell: narrator has a free-spirited goth girlfriend who disappears, but no name

Anna Cayne, who prefers Anastasia, moves to town one August, and by February she has killed everyone in town- at least on paper, when she finishes writing their obituaries. She dresses goth but defies definition when she starts going out with a normal, almost invisibly ordinary guy. He considers himself more boring than milk- more like water. His mom is incompetent at everything, his dad hides in his den most of the time, and his older brother barely ever visits their stifling home. He has one friend, Curt, who is the friendly, well-liked school drug dealer- mostly prescription stuff like Ritalin. His and Anna's odd couple relationship is the talk of the school, and her zest for mystery and knowing her world is beginning to rouse him from his mediocre life. Then a week before Valentine's Day, she disappears. The only evidence she leaves behind is a hole in the ice of the river and a dress, carefully laid out next to the hole. No one knows if she's dead or alive. She used to constantly send him cryptic notes and mix CD's, and that doesn't end after she's gone. The narrator- who remains unnamed the entire book- becomes obsessed with figuring out what her clues mean and where she is, even if that means asking TV and phone psychics he doesn't really believe in and trying to catch them out like Houdini did. He and Anna had a code phrase they would use to know if the other person was trying to contact them: "as simple as snow." Now he is seeing and hearing it several places. Even when he seems to be getting nowhere in solving her mystery, his life is changing along the way, mostly for the better.

Very good mystery- although I'm warning you, a lot goes unresolved in the end. Many questions are left with only the smallest hints of answers, but by the end the narrator's life and outlook have changed in such a way that I didn't hate the ambiguity.

This book won an Alex Award in 2006, and for good reason. For whatever mysterious distinction that New York devised, it was published for adults, but it's really a high school book. I mean, really. High school characters, authentic high school voice, some language and mention of sex, but nothing explicit (not that that bars it from the teen shelves). All part of cashing in on the YA book market's enormous growth, I suppose.

Since the hardcover and paperback covers are so different, I included both. Which do you like better? I can't decide.