Review: Run by Kody Keplinger

Bo Dickinson is a girl with a wild reputation, a deadbeat dad, and a mama who's not exactly sober most of the time. Everyone in town knows the Dickinsons are a bad lot, but Bo doesn't care what anyone thinks.

Agnes Atwood has never gone on a date, never even stayed out past ten, and never broken any of her parents' overbearing rules. Rules that are meant to protect their legally blind daughter -- protect her from what, Agnes isn't quite sure.

Despite everything, Bo and Agnes become best friends. And it's the sort of friendship that runs truer and deeper than anything else.

So when Bo shows up in the middle of the night, with police sirens wailing in the distance, desperate to get out of town, Agnes doesn't hesitate to take off with her. But running away and not getting caught will require stealing a car, tracking down Bo's dad, staying ahead of the authorities, and -- worst of all -- confronting some ugly secrets.

My Review: 5 Stars

Before reading Run, my favorite Kody Keplinger book was either The DUFF or A Midsummer's Nightmare, but now this book has easily stolen that number one spot.  It's definitely her best so far, and takes a bit of a different tone than her earlier books.  I have read it two times now.

The friendship between Agnes and Bo is the strongest part of this book.  This friendship is one that surprised both girls when it happened, but it was a really genuine and strong friendship.  It's clear how much they both care about each other and love each other.  Sometimes their friendship isn't always the best for them, especially for the situation that it got Agnes into, but it is still obvious how much Bo cares about her.  Bo doesn't want to drag Agnes in her mess, but she also needs Agnes with her, because she needs a friend.

I loved Bo's character so much, and felt sad for the life that she had to live.  Her mom didn't really care about her at all, and sometimes her mom got arrested, which made Bo be put into foster care.  Her dad left when she was fairly young.  In town, everyone has misconceptions about her, and rumors that they spread about her.  Everyone assumes that she sleeps around, which is why it is shocking to Agnes when she finds out this might not be so true.  I think Bo just really needed someone to care about her, since she was a genuinely good person given a bad lot in life.

Agnes was a blind girl who was extremely overprotected by her parents.  They wouldn't even let her walk home from her school bus stop.  Ultimately, her smothering by her parents is what made her run away with Bo (and also because she wanted to be there for Bo and wasn't going to let Bo run away alone).  She has some important conversations about how they treat her differently than they treated her older sister and her age and how it's clearly because she's blind.

If you like YA contemporary, read this book.

Katie