Reread: "Thin Ice" by Marsha Qualey

Thin Ice by Marsha Qualey
Originally read sometime around 2000
★★★★

A childhood reread. Funny what things stick with you (Arden's pompadour, the origin of her name, the bowling shirts, the time Arden calls the cops) and what doesn't (Jean and Kady, Hannah, Arden's seventeenth-birthday kiss). I love so many things about this pre-cellphone, barely-into-the-Internet-age type of YA (though there are also some glaring gaps, such as the way the characters are all white and straight and able-bodied and basically financially sound), and rereading now makes me think that this, like Ellen Emerson White, has been inadvertently quite influential on my own writing. Makes me want to go through other old childhood favorites and see what does, and doesn't, stand the test of time.