WHO'S THAT GIRL

A teen is unwittingly vaulted into the limelight by her old crush when his band hits the charts with a song that he seems to have written about her.

Seventeen-year-old socially awkward Natalie “Nattie” McCullough-Schwartz is most comfortable with her tightknit group of friends: extroverted Tess and the two Zachs (known affectionately as Tall Zach and Zach the Anarchist), who, with Nattie, make up the core of Owen Wister Preparatory Academy’s Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Intersex and Asexual Alliance. However, the unresolved events of an evening the year before, when cute, mysterious Sebastian approached her at a party, land her in a complicated scenario in which they keep exchanging somewhat flirtatious texts after the song about her debuts. At the same time, she and Zach the Anarchist also have a history that won’t seem to stay in the past. The main narrative is predictable, but this is balanced by clever dialogue and welcome subplots involving Tess coming to terms with telling her family she is gay and the OWPALGBTQIA running a disastrously funny bake sale to raise money to sponsor their school’s winter formal in order to make it more inclusive. The lead characters seem to be white, Tall Zach is Jewish and gay, and Nattie’s family has a Chinese exchange student, Sam Huang, living with them.

A light, funny romance that offers few surprises but a fair degree of satisfaction