JERSEY ANGEL

Six months in the life of a proudly sex-positive 17-year-old from the Jersey Shore (but definitely not Jersey Shore).

Angel Cassonetti’s life is based on two things: her exquisite awareness of and facility at wielding her sex appeal, and her close, almost sisterly friendship with Inggy Olofsson. Pale and blond, studious and monogamous with her longtime boyfriend Cork, Inggy stands in sharp contrast to the easily tanned, curly brunette, scholastically blasé and sexually precocious Angel. When Angel’s longtime on-again, off-again boyfriend Joey tells her he’s done playing games—"I don’t want to sleep around. I want to sleep with my girlfriend"—she finds herself drifting through the summer before senior year. She begins a potentially explosive secret fling that she can’t quite find a way out of, though she tells herself “I can stop it anytime. And I will. It’s not cool. It just isn’t.” School begins anew, and Angel is forced to confront her future. How long will this secret relationship continue? What comes after graduation, if her carefree approach to school has made college a no-go for now? 

Aided by a strong evocation of the tourist-driven rhythms of life on the Central Jersey Shore and a satisfyingly complicated, modern protagonist, this quick read will please readers looking for both nuance and heat in their beach books.