Shotgun Lovesongs by Nickolas Butler
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Just great storytelling-----about a group of high school friends and the changes in their relationships as they get older. It is a sentimental and poignant story about ordinary people in ordinary lives made extraordinary in the telling.

Told in interesting first-person narratives of each major character addressing the reader as “you” which lends itself to an intimate, confessional relationship between character and reader. These characters are multidimensional and every detail, the time, location and events of the story are finely wrought and realized.

In the end, Butler manages to say important things about growing up and what that means and maybe about America itself.

Audio Version is great - performance of the readers is just very enjoyable.

Favorite quote:
" I tell my children when you are caught in a lie, or when you do something wrong, just STOP. Don't make excuses. Don't keep talking. Don't try to explain yourself. Just own up to what you've done wrong. when you do that, things inevitably work out better. You LOOK and FEEL better. More likely than not, you also catch the other person off guard."

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