Kathleen Gray's Reviews > Don't Say We Didn't Warn You

Dysfunctional doesn't begin to describe this family of two young women who are almost feral. Their mother, an artist, more or less abandoned them to a warehouse in a town under an interstate while she's in NYC and their father, a musician, hasn't been seen in years. This is narrated by the older, unnamed sister and it moves around in time (a lot) between her teen years, her time in the Veld Center (a sort of boot camp treatment facility for teens), and the present, when she is living with a woman in the warehouse, which has been renovated and going back and forth to NYC herself. The younger sister, Fawn, has serious mental health issues. She too is sent to Veld but now she's been released and she's presenting herself as May. There's drug use, there's abuse, there's lot of stuff. Animal lovers (aren't we all) need to be forewarned. Oddly, the best parts were actually at Veld, with its small portraits of other teens and the program itself, Neither of the narrator or Fawn/May were sympathetic. Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC. A gritty coming of age story.