Stepbrother Dearest

Elec arrives to live with his stepsister during her senior year of high school, and he makes it plain that he did not want to come. He takes his resentment out on her. He also brings girls from school back to his room. She resents all of it, and she resents more that her body responds to him anyway.

She first sees only the tattooed, muscled, sharp-featured surface. Then something shifts between them, and one night brings it to a head. Soon after, Elec goes back to California, as abruptly as he arrived.

Years pass without any sight of him. When tragedy strikes the family, she has to face him again. The sullen teenager has become a man, and he unsettles her even more than before.

The stepsister narrates in the first person, and the book moves between the high school years and the later reunion. It stands alone, with no earlier book needed. The question it turns on is whether her heart can survive Elec a second time.