I really enjoyed Laura Moriarty's The Rest of Her Life. As I've said before, I don't experience the I-can't-put-it-down syndrome when reading, but I happily read The Rest of Her Life in 50 and 100 page hunks.
The story begins with a traffic accident where a teenage, driving while on the phone and further distracted by a dog she and her passenger have "rescued," kills a girl a few years younger than herself. The plot then looks at a myriad of relationships—the girl and her mother, the mother and her sister, the mother and her mother, and—believe it or not—others. Nothing in the writing reached out and grabbed me, but the characters themselves are well drawn and multi-faceted.
It's not a mystery, it's not grippingly suspenseful, and it's not a commentary on our political life—although one character is connected to the war in Iraq. It's simply a good story with characters both understandable and believable. IMHO.
