ALL THE WAY
by Andy Behrens
The pun in the title is a pretty good indication of the direction of this giggle-out-loud first novel. Ian has spent the summer before senior year working at a Chicago mall Dunkin’ Donuts while his best friends Lance and Felicia have been working and visiting France, respectively. Ian has been chatting up Danielle in South Carolina, a girl he met via IM and texting, and on the last weekend before school Ian decides to drive to Charleston and lose his virginity to her. Ian is a quintessential nice guy, Lance is a smooth dude and Felicia is smart and sassy. How the three of them end up taking the 1800-mile drive together, and what ensues en route and when they arrive, makes for some greatly hilarious dialogue, nearly all of it raunchy without using any of those funny words. It won’t take any reader long to figure out that Ian and Felicia belong together, although it takes them most of the story. The ending is impossibly neat and depth of character isn’t happening here, but girls will be cheering Felicia on, and boys, “exiled on the wrong side of puberty” with Ian, will laugh at how well he’s inside their heads, and their shorts. (Fiction. YA)