The Best Laid Plans

February 1, 2020

Gr 10 Up-A cute first-person narrative about the big "V" word: virginity. Keely is in her final year of high school. She has four best friends, though she doesn't really like two of them, but it's a small town, so you take what you can get. When one of her friends loses their virginity at a party, it seems she is the only virgin left. But when Keely meets a James Dean look-alike from the local college, she feels the pressure to lose her V-card. James Dean doesn't know Keely is a virgin, and she wants to keep it that way, so she asks her friend Andrew to help her become more experienced, and things get messy. Because when two best friends cross a line, there is no going back. This romantic comedy is a mix of awkward emotions and miscommunication. Approachable and easy to read, it explores complicated topics like slut-shaming and peer pressure. The author uses dynamic characters to create a well-rounded story. Keely's friends experience growth, which helps Keely understand her own emotions and perspective. The tone is light, making it an enjoyable, quick read. The themes, and how they are addressed, make the story stand out. In the end, there's a group of teens who have grown and have a thorough understanding of what they've gone through and are fearless as they approach the unknown future. VERDICT This heartwarming, funny novel will resonate with anyone struggling under the weight of societal pressures.-Haley Amendt, Hinton Municipal Library, Alberta

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February 1, 2020
A high school senior aims to lose her virginity. Keely Collins has grown up with the same small, tight group of kids all her life, making romance a difficult proposition. It's hard to feel sexy with someone when you've seen them eat paste. But after discovering she's the last virgin standing, Keely resolves to lose her virginity before finishing high school. Luckily, Keely's earned the attention of her sexy older co-worker, Dean. While Dean and Keely get hot and heavy, Keely's best friend, Andrew, starts acting weird. If you think you know where this is going, you're absolutely right. The novel takes the "childhood friends figure out they love each other" trope and sprints with it, forgetting to prop it up with complex characters or dynamic plotting. Events spill forward with little regard to pacing save for one element: the sexy bits. The author's steamy scenes are appropriately titillating when they need to be and emotionally affecting when it counts. The book's scenes of true intimacy and pure sexual energy are well-crafted set pieces, using heavy petting to illuminate characters that are stunningly two dimensional before and afterward. There's just enough going on here to halfheartedly recommend the title, but there's also enough potential to cause anticipation for the author's sophomore outing. All main characters are cued as white; secondary characters are black and Korean. Read it for the sexy parts. (Fiction. 14-18)

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March 2, 2020
Everyone at Keely’s tiny Vermont high school has known each other forever, and since her lifelong best friend, Andrew, is a guy, the other guys at school seem to think she’s one, too. She can just about bear being one of two known senior class female virgins, until, at her 18th birthday party, she walks in on the other one getting it on. So when she gets a job at the local video store and her handsome college-student coworker, Dean, seems to like her—or at least the more sophisticated version of herself she’s pretending to be—she decides that it’s time. Worried that Dean will freak when he finds out she’s a virgin, she asks Andrew, who’s known as a bit of a player, for help. In her debut, Lund takes the right-under-your-nose rom-com trope to the extreme, and when the scales finally fall from Keely’s eyes, readers may wish the endless detours could have been avoided. Still, watching Keely take risks and be brave once she knows what she wants is satisfying. Ages 14–up. Agent: Taylor Haggerty, Root Literary.