It tells the story of a 17-year-old boy with a dark personality who falls in love with a woman for the first time, but his fear that she will leave him destroys the relationship.

Anne Cathrine Straume of NRK wrote: Sæterbakken doesn't explain, he lays out situations.

And they are distinctively teenager-like, where small details in friends' word choices can get unproportional importance.

This text gives me the sensation that every sentence is carefully elaborated, that the language wants something, moves towards something, grabs ahold.

[1]Dagbladet's Maya Troberg criticised the story for being predictable, but wrote: Don't Leave Me is a novel that comes close to formal perfection.