Griffin Nichols is an angry young man. Just graduated from high school, the hard-partying Griff drives away his friends with his desperate, rage-fueled attempts to hold them to the “Bro Code” they developed as kids. At home, his mother works two jobs because his father is cooling his heels in jail—after having a secret second family revealed—and his brother, Phoenix, left four years ago—something that hurt Griffin more than anything else. Phoenix sends cryptic postcards from time to time, but never makes any other attempt at contact. Griffin believes everyone abandons him eventually.

When his mother forces him to take a job working for Cal, a new arrival in town fixing up a house to flip, Griffin meets Max. Pretty, thoughtful Max has her own family drama, but the two are immediately drawn to each other. Griffin insists that Max is just a friend, and has a rule about only having sex with girls he doesn’t care about. Max, feeling rejected, distances herself from Griffin, but they stay in touch and slowly reconnect after she heads off to college. Through Max’s gentle influence, Griffin slowly begins to see a better life—a life where he takes responsibility for his actions and accepts the love that other offer him. But just as he and Max admit their feelings for each other and his life seems to be getting on track, Griffin makes one final disastrous decision that tests his newfound outlook and his relationship with Max to the limit.

C.L. Walters writes in an easy, enjoyable style and captures the operatic melodrama of late teens very well; she overdoes the “Bro Code” business a bit in the beginning, but once the story settles into Griffin’s chaotic groove it smooths out. Griffin’s tendency to assume no one will accept him for who he truly is—and to imagine that who he truly is is both more monstrous and irredeemable than it actually is—also feels very true. His relationship with Max is tenderly explored, and the slow-burn nature of it is well done and gives the story real stakes. Many of the other characters are a bit flat, however. Literally everyone in Griffin’s life appears to simply be waiting to forgive him and offer him wisdom—Max’s father, both of Griffin’s parents, his older brother (who has a traumatic secret of his own), the friends he’s abused and driven away, even a friend who shares his final bad decision and its consequences, they all have the same forgiving energy and patient affection for Griffin. It’s as if the whole town was dosed with a maturity drug while Griffin was sleeping, and it makes Griffin’s path back into the light a bit too easy despite the challenges in his way.

Something else that undermines the story a bit is Griffin himself. He’s very unlikable early on—a selfish, angry, self-pitying person who’s head is no fun to be inside. That’s necessary for the story being told, and Griffin does lighten up as he learns how to live, but it makes it difficult to understand why Max falls for him so hard. Griffin is somewhat sympathetic considering everything he’s dealt with, but whatever charisma we’re supposed to imagine he has remains theoretical. That said, the story delves honestly and often brutally into the challenges of growing up. There’s substance abuse, promiscuity, and their consequences. There’s peer pressure, mean-spirited gossip, and stints in jail. Friends drift and jealousies rise. In the end, despite its flaws IN THE ECHO OF THIS GHOST TOWN is a story with emotional impact.

C.L. Walters has penned an emotionally satisfying and deeply-felt study of a teenage boy’s journey from anger and emotional trauma to healthy maturity in IN THE ECHO OF THIS GHOST TOWN.

~Jeff Somers for IndieReader