MY ALMOST EPIC SUMMER

The clear, but occasionally unrealistic teenage voice of Irene Morse, a spunky, intelligent and sometimes melodramatic heroine, recounts the summer leading into her freshman year. Just fired from her mother’s salon, Irene resigns herself to a less than epic summer, until she meets Starla, the lifeguard at the local lake, who radiates a perfection that enchants Irene. Slowly, however, Irene uncovers Starla’s snarly side and realizes that she’s much better off without her. Woven throughout are heavy literary references, which reinforce Irene’s bookish character, but that seem beyond her age group or at least above potential readers (Lolita;A Confederacy of Dunces). However, in a failed attempt to counterbalance this maturity, there are several gossipy e-mail correspondences to her best friends that are brimming with overpoweringly cutesy nicknames and way too many exclamation points!!! These e-mails throw Irene’s character off balance and disrupt the plot’s otherwise smooth and believable flow. (Fiction. YA)