Just Flirt

May 14, 2012
Best friends Dee and Natalie want a fun, flirty summer before their senior year. Dee, still coping with her father’s death more than a year earlier, helps her mother run their down-home business, Barton Family Campgrounds. In between children’s crafts and weenie roasts, the girls plan to hit on cute campers without letting anything get too deep. Bowers (Beauty Shop for Rent) leans on rom-com clichés a bit too often: “Natalie returns and hands me not one, but two Skinny Cows,” Dee says after she spars with hot teenage handyman Jake, and Dee’s bad-boy ex is predictable and one-dimensional in his motives. But other characters, such as mean-girl Sabrina and her karaoke-DJ mother, weave complexity and depth into Bowers’s thickening plot. At times, adult problems—a lawsuit, a divorce—overshadow teen issues of allegiance, popularity, affection, and friendship. As revelations come to light about a secret dating-advice blog called Superflirt (excerpts from which appear throughout), Dee, Natalie, Sabrina, and others transform and realign in clever ways in this sweet and lively summer read. Ages 12–up. Agent: Rosemary Stimola, Stimola Literary Studio.