Perfect Escape by Jennifer Brown

Honors student Kendra is about to graduate high school when something very bad she has done comes to light. The scandal promises to ruin her chances of college, and will certainly tarnish the "perfect-kid" impression her parents have of her. Rather than face up to what she's done, which readers don't fully know until the end of the book, Kendra makes a split-second decision to hit the road with her just-out-of-treatment-for-OCD older brother Grayson. As she formulates her plan on the road, Kendra comes to see the trip as a way to cure both herself and her brother, whose illness has controlled her family life for almost as long as she can remember. The trip is not easy. Kendra has very little money, and Grayson's need for routine and cleanliness about makes Kendra crazy. The one secret hope Kendra has is of getting them to California, to visit Zoe, a girl who is both Kendra's long lost best friend and Grayson's former girlfriend. Even that plan has its flaws, though, as Zoe's family packed up and moved out of Missouri to get away from Grayson.

Author Jennifer Brown very effectively captures the interplay of the two siblings trapped in the car together, each with his or her own reasons for liking and disliking the other. Brown also gives what seems to be an honest depiction of a young man suffering from extreme OCD (I can't say firsthand how accurate it is, having little firsthand experience with it).  Grayson is a quirky, difficult, and highly sympathetic character, and the strongest character in the book even though it's Kendra doing the narration. Brown slowly reveals the story of their relationship with each other, as well as the others around them, as the trip unfolds. Teen readers will relate to the young characters in the novel, and Brown does not provide a tidy, well-packaged resolution. Instead, readers are faced with questions about Kendra's actions, and their possible consequences-- just like Kendra is herself by the final page of the novel. This would make a very good book club book, as there are plenty of topics to discuss.