Tenderness

Robert Cormier’s Tenderness depicts the journey of two teens both looking for tenderness in two completely different ways. Both are emerging into adulthood and seeking a feeling lost at childhood.

Lori is a fifteen year old runaway looking for the attention and tenderness she never gets at home. Her mother struggles with alcoholism and brings men into the home that do nothing but cause more stress between mother and daughter. Finally, having had enough of home life, she picks up and leaves to fulfill a fixation she has with rock star Throb. When the plan backfires, she finds herself drawn to the eyes and smile of a handsome boy, whom she shares a past with.
Behind the beautiful eyes and innocent smile lies Eric Poole. Poole is a convicted murderer being released after serving his three year sentence in a juvenile facility for the deaths of his mother and stepfather. He too is looking for a feeling of tenderness that he never got at home as a child. Only problem is that Eric finds tenderness in all the wrong things. Death of innocent animals and girls is how he achieves that tender feeling.

Lori and Eric reunite after a fateful meeting three years back, and from there readers are thrown into suspense wondering what will happen between the two. Lori is looking for the tenderness Eric once showed her, and he is looking for the tenderness in killing an innocent girl. Written in both characters point of view allows you to get into their heads and see how differently they see things and interpret events, and how they find tenderness in the same things, yet in different ways.

A suspenseful journey between the two will keep you on the edge of your seat and turning pages to see how the events will play out, and what the end result will be. Can a convicted murder looking for tenderness through charming and then killing innocent girls, and a lost lonely teen looking for tenderness from a charming guy ultimately save each other? Together can they overcome their fixation for a feeling lost years ago, and learn to live and love?