Books like As Hot as It Was You Ought to Thank Me

The characters in Nanci Kincaid's "As Hot As It Was You Ought to Thank Me" are amazingly well written but comparing it to "To Kill a Mockingbird" as some critics chose to do gives the author too much credit.The book is the story of Berry Jackson, a teenager growing up Pinetta, Fla. As in most small towns, every family scandal belongs to the community.The community includes all of the usual players–narrator Berry, her father the school principal, her mother, her two brothers, and an extremely wealthy family and one that's dirt poor. To push the reader on a bit there are a couple of promiscuous, wild teenaged girls, a hurricane, a chain gang, the disappearance of two key characters, and lots of snakes.Other reviews claim Berry is 13 years old in the book. This is difficult to tell since she sometimes acted like a child and other times like a woman. Perhaps this is part of the charm of the character set in the past in a small town.Despite good writing and an exciting plot, this book is frustrating. Just as you find yourself getting involved in the story line, the book ends. There really are no answers or conclusions. It's almost as if Kincaid got tired to writing and stopped.