Saturday, December 6, 2008

A Bad Boy Can Be Good for a Girl by Tanya Lee Stone

Main Characters:  Josie, Nicolette, and Aviva
Location:  High School 
Time period:  Contemporary
Genre:  YA Fiction, Fiction in verse

Josie is a freshman when HE notices her.  HE tells her she's the only one that HE can open up to, the only one HE can tell his reveal his deepest, truest feelings to.  Nicolette is older, more experienced (though she mostly hooks up with guys from another school so she doesn't get a reputation) when she meets HIM and breaks her own rules.   Aviva, too, falls under HIS spell.  And each of them discovers that HE was just playing them, racking up points.

The girls do get a bit of revenge.  No, they don't take HIM down and make HIM change HIS ways.  But they do band together and discover they are not alone.  Josie finds a copy of Judy Blume's Forever on the school library shelf, and writes a note on one of the blank pages in the back.  Soon the empty pages are filled by many more than just these three girls.  

As a librarian, I know I should cringe at the thought of the book being defaced (and if I found a book written in like this in real life, I would most likely weed it out of the collection) but in context it felt so right.  I will point out that this is for more mature readers--there are no graphic descriptions, but two of the girls do have sex.  That said, I enjoyed this book, and I liked the girl power solution that the girls found to cope with their shared pain and to warn other potential victims.   

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