This Will Go Down on Your Permanent Record

September 1, 2008
Gr 9 Up-While taking pictures in Nashville's Dragon Park, 16-year-old Vaughn Vance meets Sophie Birch, small, lithe, and bad-girl pretty. Sophie hangs with Vaughn to escape her depressing home life with a single mom who is housework challenged. This odd couple become fast friends and Sophie becomes Vaughn's muse. After her mom moves away, she accepts an invitation to move in with Vaughn and her caring parents. The teens remain friends until Vaughn makes the mistake of kissing Sophie's ex-boyfriend, the breakup too new for Vaughn's indiscretion to be seen as anything short of serious disloyalty. The rest of the book is essentially Vaughn consumed with whether Sophie will ever be her friend again, an obsession that flirts with homosexuality at one point. References to pop culture are current but are at times forced attempts to relate to the teen audience, with such adjectives as "gimungus" and "pube-curl" and a drink made from fruit punch and vodka called "Sex on the Rag." The novel loses whatever momentum it had as the characters start school and Vaughn uses photography and the peace of the darkroom to forget about Sophie. The author goes into depth about the process of bringing photos from the shutter to the exhibit, but it is not enough to keep readers' interest."Stephanie Glass Shteirman, High School in the Community, New Haven, CT"

Copyright 2008 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.