Where can I get a hanging moose sweater?

I picked this one up based on the recommendation of Caitlin’s review. No One Else Can Have You is centered around 16 year old Kippy Bushman, and told to us by her in first person narration. It is also a YA read and Ms. Hale’s first novel.

Kippy’s best friend has just died. More specifically, she was murdered. It is the first murder that anyone in Friendship, WI (population 688) can remember. The town is in shut down mode until the suspected killer is apprehended. The problem for Kippy is that she doesn’t believe that the person accused of the crime is actually the culprit. In fact, between her best friend Ruth’s diary and some rudimentary detective work Kippy is able to clear the suspect (Ruth’s cheating boyfriend) and start looking into new suspects. Unlike the local police who are too excited to have the crime tied up with a nice bow on the town’s local miscreant. What follows is the story of Kippy finding out who her friends are, and who aren’t and what really happened to the best friend she lost too soon.

There are plenty of things that worked for me in No One Else Can Have You. Kippy’s widower father Dom is a treasure of a character. Complex and interesting with the kind of heart anyone could wish for their own parent. There’s also a very realistic examination of just how tough we can all be on our best friends, particularly when we are teenage girls. It is also fantastic at mining the depths of not completely understanding attraction, and who likes whom more.  And that fabulous cover art. Bravo to whomever designed it; I want to wear that sweater.

But, there are many things which didn’t work for me as well. And I really felt that they detracted significantly from my enjoyment of the book. First, Ms. Hale covers a lot of the ground several times. Kippy’s antagonists antagonize in the same way. Over and over again. Kippy uses the same petulant tone consistently. It also takes nearly a hundred pages (of 380) for the story to get going, and in the last 80 it makes a serious change in tone.

Give it a read if you like YA first person protagonists and murder mysteries. If any of these things annoy you, stay away.