Summer Sisters

Judy Blume, author of numerous books for children and young adults and a couple of adult novels, straddles the latter two genres with SUMMER SISTERS. The listener is transported back to the moment two sixth-grade girls meet. Kate Reading can be childlike or sexy, innocent or manipulative, as she realizes their different natures. Her breezy retelling of nearly twenty years in Victoria's and Caitlin's lives as "summer sisters" gives no pause to the book's separation into parts, which can be confusing. Still her rendition of the troubled but true friendship is too juicy to leave until the unexpected ending. R.N. (c)AudioFile, Portland, Maine