TRIGGER
Susan Vaught
Bloomsbury USA Children’s Books
Fiction
Hardcover: 1582349207
Paperback: 9781599902302
304 pages

Frog farts.

Santa. Shoelaces. Elana Arroyo.

All these words are a jumble in Jersey Hatch's head.

HOUSE IS FINE MORON QUIT ASKING.

He has to remind himself to do the things that you and I take for granted, like thinking before speaking, and climbing a flight of stairs, or not constantly asking aloud if his parents' house is all right.

He didn't always have to do this. He didn't always need an aide at school, and he used to have a best friend, Todd, and decent grades and a place on the football and golf teams.

That was before he shot himself in the head.

Since the shooting, Jersey has lost all of his recent memory. He doesn't remember any of his 15th year and only recalls a portion of his 16th, the portion not spent in a coma, on a ventilator. Now, just turned 17, he is home from the hospital with three very deep scars and a thousand questions. The most frustrating question, the one neither he nor anyone else can answer, is: Why did you shoot yourself? To answer this question, Jersey will have to go through his book of memories and visit with one of the only people who never gave up on him: Mama Rush, his best friend's wise, sometimes curmudgeonly grandmother.

Mama Rush isn't going to make anything easy for Jersey, though. In order to find the answer to the question of why he shot himself, Jersey will have to make seemingly farfetched lists of possible reasons, contact people who would ridicule him, and try to communicate through the seemingly random words that infiltrate his speech. And the one person who might have the key to Jersey's discovery, his former best friend Todd, wants nothing to do with him.

If you liked THE BURN JOURNALS by Brent Runyon, then you'll be fascinated by Jersey's "upward and outward" climb towards memory and recovery. Like Brent, Jersey will never make a full physical recovery, but in his journey towards learning the answers he needs to fill in the empty spaces in his memory, he finds strange new friendships and unexpected alliances. To come to an understanding with himself, his family and his former friends, he will have to take small steps, speak one word at a time, and do his best not to give up when the words become clutter and his curiosity about the shooting makes him do and say irrational things.

Jersey's recovery won't be easy for anyone he is or was close to. And he will find out quickly not only who cares about him, but how.

    --- Reviewed by Carlie Webber.

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