MY BOYFRIENDS’ DOGS

Bailey Daley loves dogs, and they love her back better than most of her suitors can. When she shows up late one night at a St. Louis diner in a rain-soaked prom dress and with three dogs in tow, she piques the proprietor’s curiosity enough that he invites her to tell him her story. Bailey regales him and the occupants of his shop with tales of her misadventures on the quest to find The Perfect Boyfriend during her last three years of high school. The narrative shifts between Bailey’s first-person flashbacks, explaining how the boys in her life inevitably fail to measure up to their canine counterparts, and brief third-person passages from her listeners in the present that shed light on Bailey’s magnetic personality. The story line verges on trite—it could be called Goldilocks and the Four Boys—and the dialogue is at times painfully artificial. Still, teens who appreciate feisty female characters will be entertained by Bailey’s voyage to self-discovery, and the star-crossed ending will satisfy romance enthusiasts. (Fiction. 12 & up)