Love on the Lifts

November 1, 2014
Written for teen girls, a choose-your-own-ending romance book. It almost seems like a parlor trick; packed into 208 pages are 14 separate stories and 11 teenage boy characters, each a separate romantic lead. The book's protagonist is "you," a 16-year-old girl who has discovered your boyfriend cheated on you. The setting is a ski resort where your family rented a chalet. Your seasoned-at-romance older sister, Angie, convinces you the way to move past the pain is to "find a boy, flirt, and kiss him." When you and Angie hit the slopes, your first prospect is a cute boy by the ski lift who winks at you. From this point on in the book, readers are offered choices: They can continue to ski with Angie or jump to a designated page to pursue the chosen boy. Readers can continue to follow each boy's story path to its happy ending. Santopolo does a wondrous job creating 11 distinctly different characters with such limited time for development, and the dialogue is snappy and creative. There's no time for deep, thoughtful conversations between "you" and your potential suitor, and because of the limited plotline constraint, first base is sometimes reached with alarming dispatch. The complex construction of the book makes navigating a path back from one boy to a different romantic partner a challenge. But still, deliciously appealing fare for teenage girl readers. Light and fluffy as new-fallen snow. (Fiction. 12-16)

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November 1, 2014

Gr 7-10-Your boyfriend was just caught kissing another girl. But you get to escape the embarrassment and post-breakup social slump by traveling with your family on an annual trip to the Galaxy Ski Resort. Your older and more experienced sister, Angie, has hatched a plan to help you get over your philandering boyfriend in less than a week: fall in love on the lifts or, at the very least, kiss a boy. As soon as you accept the plan as exactly the remedy your broken heart needs, Angie is plowed over by a skier and you have some choices to make. Should you stick with your sister while she recovers from her minor injuries or should you choose from one of the eleven different boys who could be a new romance? In this "Choose-Your-Own-Adventure"-style book, readers gets to select the path of the story by making decisions at various points in the plot's development. Ranging from a quiet day with her sister to a funny trip on the lifts with a handsome stranger, readers can experiment with the different results of each decision made by the main character. This is a quick, breezy tale with with very light character development. The interactive format is the true attention-grabber.-Lynn Rashid, Marriotts Ridge High School, Marriottsville, MD

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