Kiss Crush Collide

November 21, 2011
High school junior Leah comes from a quintessentially perfect family: her parents are high school sweethearts, her older sisters are both gorgeous valedictorians, and their family is well-off and well connected. With Leah’s oldest sister, Yorke, recently engaged, and middle sister, Freddie, celebrating her graduation, Leah has had enough of the many expectations that weigh on her. When Leah meets Porter, the handsome bad boy who parks cars at her family’s country club, she sees the perfect opportunity to break away from her family and her tried and true boyfriend, Shane. Writing from Leah’s first-person perspective, debut author Meredith spends an inordinate amount of time on the details of the charmed life Leah chafes against and her romantic yearnings, which are sometimes described in queasy terms (“But what my boyfriend spent more than twelve months achieving inch by inch in my bedroom, Porter had plundered in a few sweaty minutes”). The romance and intrigue will draw readers, but the underdeveloped characters and their flattened emotions drain the story of intensity and sizzle. Ages 13–up. Agent: The Chudney Agency.

January 1, 2012

Gr 9 Up-Leah Johnson has it all: looks, popularity, money, and great grades. The youngest of three sisters, she has never had to work for anything. Homecoming Queen, valedictorian, girlfriend of the school's quarterback-all of these things have been or will be handed to Leah simply because of who she is and what Yorke and Freddie had gotten before her. While working at the country club as a lifeguard the summer before her senior year, she meets Porter, and nothing is the same. He is everything Shane isn't-sexy, spontaneous, a question mark. Best of all, he's most likely not on the "approved list" of acceptable boyfriends. Naturally, they begin a torrid love affair. Ultimately and unimaginatively, Leah must decide to break it off with Shane and go public with her new beau or continue to keep up the charade she's been living. While teen girls might be swept up by Porter's character and the steamy cover, this novel is trite and Leah is very unlikable. She is well aware of how privileged she is, and she loves herself even more for it. When younger girls are staring at her in awe at the pool, she sighs, "You'd think I'd be used to it by now." Yeah, it's hard for Leah to be her own person because people assume she will do everything her sisters have done. And yes, her mom seems way more focused on appearances than on Leah's actual happiness, but none of that will make readers care about her or her "problems." Point fans of teen romance in the direction of books by Sarah Dessen or Susan Colasanti instead.-Lauren Newman, Northern Burlington County Regional Middle School, Columbus, NJ

Copyright 2012 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

November 15, 2011
The summer before her senior year of high school, a girl who seemingly has it all--money, looks, smarts and social position--falls for a dazzlingly handsome but mildly unsuitable boy. Leah Johnson is not the captain of her own ship. Although she knows how to drive, Leah prefers to let others take the wheel. Without much effort or thought, she drifts along in the wake of her perfect sisters, assuming, like the Johnson she is, that she'll be homecoming queen and then valedictorian. Although the pressure to be just like her sisters causes some minor chafing, and she's indifferent to the charms of her handsome, wealthy, athletic boyfriend, it's a dream life, and it never occurs to Leah not to meet everyone's expectations. Until she falls for Jon Duffy, a boy who doesn't quite fit the expected mold. This overwhelming rush of feeling wakes Leah up, and Duffy becomes the catalyst she needs to look at herself and her life choices in a different light. It's a fine premise, but her struggle is tepid, and Leah is so insipid and so completely disconnected from the wider world that the sympathy she generates is muted. Although the most intriguing thread of the book is familial, this tame G-rated story will appeal largely to girls who enjoy romances. (Fiction. 13 & up)

(COPYRIGHT (2011) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

January 1, 2012
Grades 9-12 Leah Johnson is the youngest of the three perfect Johnson sisters: valedictorians, prom queens, athletes, and scholars. In the summer before her senior year, preparing for her oldest sister's wedding, she wakes up to the fact that she wants no part of the perfect life her mother has orchestrated for her. A major part of that is her handsome, football-star boyfriend, whose advances she's been fending off for months. The catalyst for these realizations is a chance encounter with the valet-parking boy at the country club, with whom Leah has not only serious chemistry but also honest affection. Although there are plenty of steamy but nongraphic groping sessions, it's the strong character development that drives Meredith's first novel. Leah is cynical, self-aware, and breaking free from a stifling future while learning how to better understand her family. Meredith also displays a great ear for teen interior monologues in Leah's compelling first-person narrative. Readers will delight in Leah's transformation from wealthy, privileged brat to a young woman ready to take chances and live her own life.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2012, American Library Association.)