Aimee
Aimee is a novel by Mary Beth Miller. A teenager girl named Aimee commits suicide, and her friend (and book narrator) blames herself for helping her do it. So do Aimee's parents and the police, and eventually Aimee's other friends. The story follows her after she is acquitted and moves away from where she used to live and starts over at another school, while doing court-required therapy. Slowly, what led up to Aimee's suicide is revealed and she comes to terms with the fact that while she didn't kill Aimee, she could have been a better friend.
Tropes used in Aimee include:
- Adults Are Useless: Almost all of the adults are useless and annoying, at least in the narrator's eyes. For example, her mother is an emotionless Workaholic who only cares about appearances, her therapist Marge is too self righteous to help Hope, and so on.
- Amoral Attorney: The protagonist's mom.
- Cinderella Circumstances: Aimee's stepmother. See Rape as Backstory below.
- City with No Name: Intentionally on the narrator's part, since the book is her journal. She does not want to reveal where her friends live.
- Convenient Miscarriage: The protagonist's baby. Invoked, though, since she did all the things would make this likely. Also, she's never 100% sure.
- Deadpan Snarker: Aimee, and later the narrator.
- Driven to Suicide: Aimee
- Focal Character: The protagonist was this, in that the whole book revolves around Aimee, despite it actually being about the protagonist.
- Lonely Rich Kid: The protagonist.
- Manic Pixie Dream Girl: Subverted with Hope. Hope seems to be this, and this is why the main girl does not want to talk to her. Turns out she tried to kill herself shortly before the protagonist came to the school.
- Maternally Challenged: The protagonist's mom could be said to be like this.
- Nameless Narrative: The narrator's name is not revealed until the last few pages. It's Zoe.
- Parental Abandonment: The main girl's parents are effectively absent from her life.
- Rape as Backstory: Aimee's stepmother was molesting her at night.
- Rich Bitch: The protagonist's mother
- Secondary Character Title: Aimee is not the protagonist, in fact she dies before the events of the novel start.
- Six:Student Clique: The protagonist and her friends:
- The Head: Chard
- The Muscle: Kyle or Jason
- The Quirk: ???
- The Pretty One: Aimee
- The Smart One: Kates
- The Wild One: The protagonist and Aimee trade between this and The Pretty One.
- Teen Pregnancy: The narrator was briefly pregnant with Chard's child. Probably.
- Toxic Friend Influence: Aimee, in a way.
- Wicked Stepmother: Aimee's stepmom, who verbally abuses her, turns her father against her, and rapes her and probably her brother at night.
- Workaholic: The main girl's mother