Pleasant and predictable, this light teen romance, told in a convincingly breathless first-person narrative, focuses on a small-town high-school girl’s dramatic aspirations and romantic mishaps. Dumped by her boyfriend Brad, Jessica schemes to get him back until the arrival of a new boy in town causes her to lose interest in her old flame. Jordan, son of a famous movie star, seeks anonymity. Although he’s not overly enthusiastic about his move from California to Three Forks, N.M., he’s hoping that a new start will give him the chance to be accepted on his own terms. How girl gets boy (pretty much as you’d expect), loses him (she blabs his secret), and then gets him back again (she declares her love for him in a hilarious, unscripted ad-lib in the middle of the school play), makes for an entertaining and satisfying read. The unintentionally hilarious politically correct rewrite of West Side Story, an entertainingly vicious rivalry between two teen drama queens and the likely reconciliation of Jordan’s parents add to the fun. (Fiction. 12 )
