The Borrower

 The Borrower by Rebecca Makkai, 324 pages.

In a fictional version of Hannibal (this one has no river) children's librarian Lucy Hull accidentally kidnaps (or is kidnapped by, depending on your perspective) her favorite patron, ten-year-old Ian Drake. Ian is a voracious reader, but his parents are very controlling about what he is allowed to read, forbidding any book that seems to mature or that might challenge their Christian beliefs (Lucy has helped him sneak books home). One morning Lucy finds I an in the library, running away from home and, she assumes, the anti-gay classes his parents enrolled him in several hours away. She is, only slightly hesitantly, convinced to take Ian on a cross-country road trip in an attempt to save him. 

This book was sort of fun to read, and I really enjoyed Makkai's writing style. It was almost enough to forget that the plot made absolutely no sense. However, by the time I was halfway through the book or so the fact that the plot made absolutely no sense started to become both distracting and frustrating. For example, at know point during the technically-a-kidnapping/helping Ian run away from home debacle does Lucy actually ask Ian why he is running away. She seems to do nothing but make nothing but bad, life-shattering decisions for no apparent reason. As fun as the style is, I find that this failure to ever once make a decision a rational human being would make made it sort of hard to get invested in the story.