Slacks for Ella Funt

There’s something a little otherworldly about Meg Rosoff’s books. They’re not set in some fantasy world, but it doesn’t quite seem to be our world either. Likewise, the time period that they are set isn’t obvious. I suspect it makes them hard for the publisher to market and sell, though it helps that they put absolutely lovely covers on them. In What I Was, the unnamed narrator, a student at a mediocre boarding school, becomes obsessed with Finn, another teenage boy who lives alone, completely outside of society. Finn turns out to be not what the narrator thought he was, in a twist that I didn’t see coming.