Kill Me Now: A Novel [Hardcover]

One of the Most Anticipated Small Press Books of 2018 (Big Other)

Timmy Reed writes like a whacked-out angel. Amber Sparks, author ofThe Unfinished WorldandMay We Shed These Human Bodies

Miles Lover is an imaginative but insecure adolescent skateboarder with an unfortunate nickname, about to face his first semester of high school in the fall. InKill Me Now, Miles exists in a liminal spacebetween junior high and high school, and between three houses: his mother's, his father's, and the now vacant house his family used to call home in a leafy, green neighborhood of north Baltimore. Miles struggles against his parents, his younger identical twin sisters, his probation officer, his old friends, his summer reading list, and his personal essay assignment (having to keep a journal). More than anything, though, he wrestles with himself and the fears that come with growing up.

It's not until Miles begins a mutually beneficial friendship with a new elderly neighborwhom his sisters spy on and suspect of murderthat he begins to find some understanding of lives different than his own, of the plain acceptance of true friends, and, maybe, just a little of himself in time to start a whole new year. When you're green, you grow, he learns. But when you're ripe, you rot.

With tenderness and tenacity, Timmy Reed's prosewritten in a confessional tone via Miles's journalcaptures the anguish and grit of adolescence, and the potential of growing up.