Break To You, by Neil Shusterman, Debra Young, and Michelle Knowlden

A series of bad choices in friends hands Adriana a seven month stretch in the Compass juvenile detention facility.  Allegedly based on novel approaches to rehabilitate young adults and avoid recidivism, Compass is really a morass of selfish and embittered adults who manipulate the children under their control for their own ends.  So much for the social critique element of this team-written novel.

The meat of the story though is an unusual romance.  Strictly segregated, boys and girls don't interact.  But when Adriana accidentally leaves her journal at the jail library, it is discovered by Jon, who reads and writes in it before leaving it for her.  The two develop a correspondance, clandestinely writing entries and leaving the book hidden on the shelves for the other to find later.  Soon, simply writing to each other is not enough and Adriana and Jon hatch a plan to find a way to meet face to face.  Doing so sets in motion a series of events with tragic consequences.

The story is gripping and briskly paced.  The characters are well developed and diverse, illustrating a variety of different incarceration experiences.  The adults are far less interesting, but do a good job of moving things forward.  The end, while unexpected, is satisfyingly open-ended.  I enjoyed the book, but I doubt it will do much more than entertain.  The authors bring up a number of flaws in the justice and corrections systems, but it is unlikely readers will make much of a connection between these one-dimensional baddies and the real world issues that exist.