VERY LEFREAK

There’s a playlist for every moment of college freshman Very LeFreak’s life. There’s also an IM, a meme, a text message and a social network. Very’s always focused on her next great party or her online relationship with the man who calls himself El Virus, but she’s failing most of her classes at Columbia University. Her three closest friends stage an intervention just before the end of the school year, sending Very to a tech-detox center in the Vermont woods. With the help of a therapist, Very acknowledges that her self-destructive behaviors are used as a cover for emotional wounds that never healed. She gets a grip on losing her mother, her friends and her virginity and comes to realize that her true love has been right in front of her all along. The obvious, sometimes preachy themes of addiction and information-overload, plus Cohn’s signature hipper-than-thou characters, make for a book that is heavy on the message. Readers who have fallen for the hugely likable Very, with her fluid sexuality and snappy dialogue, will feel deflated by the end. (Fiction. YA)