The first thing that delighted me about this book is the names of the two protagonists, ‘Reed’ (a tall, slender-leaved plant of the grass family that grows in water or on marshy ground) and ‘Jade’ (a hard, typically green stone used for ornaments.) By choosing these names, the contrast between them is already established. Add the title ‘Jaded’ (‘weary’) to this mix, and you already have a beginning of a feel for the characters.

Prevalent in this story is the mystery of the past. It casts a shadow over the relationship between Reed and Jade. After his mother died Reed felt so lost, until a year later, a new girl moved into the neighborhood. Jade was two years older than him and she had lost both of her parents, which for him, pointed to a way out of loneliness. Her resistance to connect with him, then as now, is explored through her reaction to the murder of her parents, back when she was a child. When the police showed up, she was sitting on the floor in between her two dead parents with their blood all over her.

At present, Jade is not your regular maiden in distress, waiting to be rescued. Instead, she takes the initiative to solve the mystery on her own, without sharing the information about it, nor the risk. “But I don’t want protection. I want to nail these bastards. I want them to pay for what they did to my parents.”

The search is crossing in two opposite directions: Jade is looking for clues, and at the same time the criminals who killed her parents are searching for her old journal, where she may have recorded the names of the killers. “It’s likely got the names of the men who killed my parents. That, with the dates combined, could very well re-open the investigation.”

Punctuating the search for clues are scenes of physical struggles between Reed and the attackers. These scenes are delivered blow by blow, with vivid cinematic rhythm, and vivid glances at the chaos that ensues: “Liquid, glass, and glitter splattered out, mixing with the spray of blood in a collage of color.”

Yet even with the violence, the author preserves a sense of the basic dignity of her characters: “Reed’s hands shook but he couldn’t make himself pull the trigger. Never in his life had he held a real gun before. And he certainly hadn’t ever intended to kill someone with one. Even now, with his and Jade’s life on the line, he couldn’t do it.”

Above all I love the way the author expresses the search for asking forgiveness, starting out with a half-ironic tone, and ending in earnest.
“I’m sorry,” he says to her at the beginning, “that I’ve always let you lead me around by the nose to my own detriment. I’m sorry that I loved you. But that’s all there is—just sorrow and regret. We’ve got nothing more between us.”

Towards the end of the story she changes enough to find the strength to tell him, without irony, “I’m sorry for everything. For obsessing on catching my parents’ killers. For dragging you into this mess. For all the times that I hurt you on purpose. For all the times that I hurt you and didn’t even know it. For all the things that I can’t even put into words. I’m just sorry.”

Five stars. ( )