A Room of One's Own

Zoe has learned what love... isn't.
Love isn't someone who is manipulative and self-centered and drunk. Love isn't guys who will just sleep with you because you're there. Love isn't people who want to see perfection so badly that they pretend things are perfect. Nope, those things are just Zoe's family. To find someone who will love her -- herself -- Zoe knows she has to leave.

When Zoe has scraped together enough money to rent A Room on Lorelei Street, the room itself takes on mythical significance. It is a place to be silent, a place to keep clean and straight and free of old memories. It is a place to invite her friends who try hard to love her. And in renting it, Zoe is trying hard to take hold of the direction of her life, and influence her future. But Zoe has a few strikes against her. One, she's only seventeen, and in the nowhere town in Texas where she lives, the only job she can find is 'slinging hash' at a diner. Two, the love she wants and deserves from her alcoholic mother, from her controlling grandmother, won't ever come like she needs it to: never. Wanting love that won't come is a huge and hard thing to understand, and it is nearly Zoe's undoing. But, like all of us, the best chance Zoe's got is in her own hands.

An amazing novel -- all the people handing out prizes aren't wrong. Read it.