What I Was by Meg Rosoff

What I Was is Meg Rosoff's first adult novel, but like her novels for teens, it is a coming of age story. A 16 year-old boy, nameless to the reader, is sent to St. Oswald's in 1962 after getting kicked out of another boarding school.  St. Oswald's is on the coast of East Anglia - a setting shared with Elly Griffiths' mysteries - with its salt marshes, Roman fort and a medieval lost town.  To escape from the brutishness of his school, he visits his idol, Finn, another teenaged boy who lives alone in a cottage that is cut off from the mainland at high tide.  Of course it turns out that living off the grid when you are only a teenager is not quite a safe thing to do, and tragedy strikes.  At just over 200 pages, this small book is a quick and enjoyable read, although not a favorite of mine like Meg Rosoff's Printz-winning novel How I Live Now.