Shut the Door, by Amanda Marquit, is a novel that I picked up a month or two ago at Barnes & Noble.  One of the reasons why I felt so compelled to buy it is because it was written by a teenager: the author started the book when she was 14, and finished it two years later.  When the book was published two years ago, she was 18 years old.

Perhaps because I was a teenaged novelist myself, I enjoy reading books by other teens that have made it into print - perhaps because I wish that I had, too.

In any case, Shut the Door is quite impressive.  In some ways, the maturity level reflected in the prose and the story is above and beyond what you would expect for a teenager, particularly in the way the family dynamics are portrayed.  In other ways, though, it's so obvious that the author was a teen, because most adults would never be able to describe so vividly the agnst of being a teenaged girl .

Although I am not quite halfway through the book, I think I may just finish it tonight, as hooked as I am by the characters and the story.