I'm having one of those moments when I'm feeling absolutely flummoxed by the fact that I can't just walk into my own library tomorrow morning and hand Justina Chen Headley's North of Beautiful over to Just The Right Reader.

I finished the last bit of this arresting teen novel just now, and you know the feeling: it's something important, and I simply need to share it with someone. Not just anyone, of course, but there is some other person in my life who would really get this book - who might even be saved by it!

Perhaps I'm being a bit melodramatic. But it's a really good book, I promise!

It's a book about beauty, about self-worth, about relationships - and about the seemingly impenetrable prison that is domestic abuse. But it isn't set in the big-city slums or in the office of a popular fashion magazine; it takes place in a small Northwestern town in the Methow Valley, and it deals heavily in the topics of cartography, art, and travel, among other things. If you're an English nerd like me, you'll notice some awkward sentence structuring within the first few pages, but push through that - before long, Headley's story (and her gift with prose, grammatical tradition notwithstanding) will sweep you away. And then before long, you'll be looking for the nearest teen (or teen at heart) to pass this book off on...