Product Description

In her final year at a prestigious boarding school, reserved, artistic Jinx is badly hurt by the treachery of the rich, pretty girl she has considered her best friend.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #547734 in Books
• Published on: 1994-01-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 248 pages

Customer Reviews

A Book I Can Well Relate To. . .
(minor semi-spoilers ahead)
Honest without being bitter, sexual without being pornographic, and like a shot of emotion direct to the heart, "Crush" was a very well-written book that was easy to relate to. I'm a gay teenager, and I'm in a small town that reacts to lesbians the same way the people in the boarding school did. When I read Jinx's feelings towards Lexie, I just sat there thinking "My god, that's me with [insert girl's name here]" (even though I doubt [insert girl's name here] would act as cruel and thoughtless as Lexie did).

Any book that can suck me in with its drama rather than make me feel jaded and cause me to feel the same emotions as the leading character is an instant classic on my list. I had to put down the book several times to tell myself that Lexie was fiction and not actually betraying Jinx (and all her readers). But then I remembered the Lexies in my life, and in the lives of millions of other lesbian teenagers. I wish that I could send a copy of this book to all of those "other lesbian teenagers", with a little note inside saying "You are not alone".

A doormat and a psycho
I've read a lot of GLBT young adult fiction. I wonder why it is that all the lesbian ones are in first person and told from the butchier girl's perspective? Maybe it's some kind of unwritten rule. Right next to the one that says one of the girls should have a funky name, like Battle or Holland. The main protagonist here is named Jinx, and the action takes place at a boarding school for girls in about 1964. An aspiring artist, Jinx becomes infatuated with an unstable girl at her school named Lexie. Jinx is very doormatish, and lets her actions be dictated by Lexie, to the point that she's doing some incredibly stupid things. When she finally gets a backbone and tries to put a stop to it, Lexie does not react well.

The story is interesting, but I frequently wanted to smack Jinx for lusting such a screwed up girl and putting up with her crap. There's at least some hope that she's going to start sticking up for herself more in the future, but I can't budge the feeling that, if this book had continued into Jinx's later life, we'd find that she'd done what was expected of a girl in that time period, and given up her artistic dreams to find herself a nice husband.

Could be captioned with "based on a true story"
This book rings so true it made my skin crawl at each turn of the page.The depiction of all characters is outstanding, and bundled together in a way to actually make you feel this is a TRUE story. This innocent, good-at-heart girl, incapable of harming a fly, who will rather cry herself to sleep rather than fight back any injustice, fighting to know herself and find her place in the world... Miggin, the faithful friend, supporting her friend no matter the circumstances... Nicky, Woodie, these adults who help perpetuate the hypocrisy, one more willingly and the other by omission of action... Laura and Maddy, epitomes of rich-girl-that-has-to-have-her-way... And last but obviously not least, Lexie, egotistical to the point of making me want to spit in her face, who will hurt anyone and everyone for the sole purpose of achieving her own goals, capable of sacrifying everyone and everything but herself. She seemed to me the perfect picture of a very dangerous sociopath on the loose, on the first stages of developing and forming a cunning, fox-like personality that --you know it and Jinx says it-- will help her go through to life killing herself on her Jaguar or running over anyone that is innocent enough to cross her path.


This book really impressed me, it's one of the few I've read in this "genre" that doesn't have that "sappy" tendency to make it all right in the end. It rings true, cruelly true.