Like many YA novels, Crosses is told in the first person. The voice of Nancy is very strong, very real, and very honest. She is angry and it shows. Particularly striking is the use of language. Nancy, Katie, and the other character's vocabulary is filled with curse words and slang. Characters do not feel bad, they feel "shitty." Things are not rotten, they "suck." Nancy and Katie use explicit language quite often, yet another controversial aspect of the book. Stoehr defends the language, writing that "I'm not saying it's impossible to write a young adult novel that speaks to teenagers without using foul language in the work. Many authors don't use foul language and still create beautiful, meaningful young adult novels.

It happens not to be the way I write, and more importantly, it's not the way my characters talk." No doubt, the vocabulary stems from...