Fifteen-year-old Lynn Marie Sugrue is doing her best to make it through a difficult summer. Her mother works long hours as a nurse, and Lynn suspects that her mother’s pill-popping boyfriend has enlisted her in his petty criminal enterprises. Lynn finds refuge in online flirtations, eventually meeting up with a troubled young soldier, Logan Loy, and inviting him home. When he’s forced to stay over in a storage space accessible through her closet, and the Army subsequently lists him as AWOL, she realizes that he’s the one thing in her life that she can control. Meanwhile, her mother’s boyfriend is on the receiving end of a series of increasingly violent threats, which places Lynn squarely in the cross-hairs.
Caring Is Creepy
and over one million other books are available for Amazon Kindle. Learn more
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Browse our Bookshelf Favorites store for big savings on popular fiction, nonfiction, children's books, and more. |
Book Description
Frequently Bought Together
Editorial Reviews
Review
Praise for Caring is Creepy
Alex Award Winner
"Lynn’s voice is authentically sardonic and compelling.... The intersections of Lynn’s and Logan’s story line with the consequences of Hayes’s shady dealings are consistently exciting."
—Publishers Weekly
"David Zimmerman has written a beautifully menacing novel. I found it impossible to stop reading—as teenage girls flirt with danger online, an AWOL soldier hides out in a closet, and drug deals go dead wrong—and you will too, as the danger steadily escalates, the sentences unspooling like a detonator line that sizzles toward an explosive, unforgettable ending."
—Benjamin Percy, author of The Wilding and Refresh, Refresh
"This story is sweet, funny, sad, infuriating, and all too real."
—Tulsa Books Examiner
"An engrossing and unforgettable tale based on actual events.... Those who can empathize with flawed characters in dire situations will not be able to put this book down.”
—Library Journal
"When Zimmerman's characters get dirty, you feel the grit, and when they hurt, you feel the sting." —Ames Tribune
“[A]n insidious and deceiving but often sweet summertime ensnarement that is alternatively a tangled web and tender trap.” —Blogcritics.org
Praise for David Zimmerman’s previous novel, The Sandbox
“[A] gripping first novel.”
—The New York Times Book Review
“[A] remarkable debut.... Zimmerman is a talent to watch.”
—Publishers Weekly, STARRED REVIEW
“Zimmerman adroitly depicts [Iraq’s] isolated moonscape—a place as liable to produce hallucinations and heat exhaustion as it is to churn up sandstorms that last for days.”
—Los Angeles Times
About the Author
David Zimmerman was raised in Atlanta, Georgia. After receiving his MFA in creative writing from the University of Alabama, he spent several years living and working in Brazil and Ethiopia. He now teaches at Iowa State University. His debut novel, The Sandbox, was released by Soho in 2010.
Product Details
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images? |
More About the Author
Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
By Whit
Format:Paperback
For a grown man, Zimmerman sure knows how to write the viewpoint of a manipulating 15 year old teen girl dealing with typical angst with an uninvolved mother. I really enjoyed this book because it embodied many different subjects into one quick, entertaining read. The author was pretty amusing in the twist that teens online can be just as predatory and dangerous as the adult counterparts that ironically, society fears more. I wish it didn't end so abruptly, but I enjoyed the ride.
4 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
*This is an ARC copy*
Lynn Marie Sugrue is a fifteen year girl with the weight of the world on her shoulders. While her mother works long hours as a nurse; her mother's boyfriend is raiding the house looking for any kind of drug he can get his hands on. Lynn is pretty sure her mom is on his drug dealing schemes but doesn't know what to do about it. When she starts talking to a Soldier online she thinks she has found her salvation. When goes AWOL she hides him away secretly planning on never letting him leave.
I really wanted to like this book, but since I didn't I won't get too wordy with this review. The plot is unique and full of twists and turns, which is the only positive for me with this one. Some more research into Army life could have helped save some of this story for me.
Lynn Marie Sugrue is a fifteen year girl with the weight of the world on her shoulders. While her mother works long hours as a nurse; her mother's boyfriend is raiding the house looking for any kind of drug he can get his hands on. Lynn is pretty sure her mom is on his drug dealing schemes but doesn't know what to do about it. When she starts talking to a Soldier online she thinks she has found her salvation. When goes AWOL she hides him away secretly planning on never letting him leave.
I really wanted to like this book, but since I didn't I won't get too wordy with this review. The plot is unique and full of twists and turns, which is the only positive for me with this one. Some more research into Army life could have helped save some of this story for me.
3 of 4 people found the following review helpful
By Lori Clark
Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase
There were things about this book which "fit" and things about it that didn't work for me at all. Lynn is fifteen and Logan Loy is 25. Which in itself is wrong for obvious reasons. Maybe if she was seventeen with him ten years older it might not seem so bad. There was so much back and forth and around and around going on in this book that it was hard for me to keep track of what was going on. Things that were there that didn't need to be there. And things that just plan did not make sense. The biggest problem I had was why Lynn needed to take all of Logan's clothes and throw them away. Why she kept him in a hidden space in the back of her closet -- naked. Another thing I didn't like was that he was able to get out and use the bathroom, why was he not able to take showers or bathe? That's just wrong. But, having said all the things I didn't like about the book, I did read it fairly fast and I enjoyed it, though some parts I skimmed over to get through. I still wonder about a few things, but that's okay. Just because I didn't get it all the time, doesn't mean it wasn't a worthy read.
Most Recent Customer Reviews
3.0 out of 5 stars
Some good twists
I really enjoyed the first half of the book. 15-year-old Lynn and her friend Dani create online profiles in chat rooms just to mess with people. Read more
Published 21 days ago by Cathe Fein Olson
3.0 out of 5 stars
This book scared me! But I liked it!
I was tossing and turning trying to finish this book, It was so real and honestly scary that I felt it got into my brain! Really that is pry a sign of a very good author. Read more
Published 12 months ago by Reading_Team
4.0 out of 5 stars
Like Two Books in One
Caring Is Creepy, in simple terms, is a coming of age novel about a rather naďve 15-year-old called Lynn Marie Sugrue. Read more
Published 13 months ago by Sam Sattler
4.0 out of 5 stars
Teen Summer Angst and Boredom lead to a Sex Slave - Drugged Dogs -...
Lynn Marie Sugrue is on summer vacation and she is TOTALLY BORED.
Instead of trash talking to people on the phone she thinks that doing it on the internet will be EVEN... Read more
Instead of trash talking to people on the phone she thinks that doing it on the internet will be EVEN... Read more
Published 13 months ago by fastreader
4.0 out of 5 stars
exciting rural Georgia thriller
In Georgia, sixteen years old Winn teaches fifteen year old Lynn Marie Sugrue and Dani Dunham how to pretend to be someone else on line. Read more
Published 13 months ago by Harriet Klausner
