MY FIRST LOVE AND OTHER DISASTERS

The summer Victoria turns 15, she pleads her way into a mother's helper job on Fire Island--""That's this super fabulous beach resort on Long Island where absolutely all the action is in the summertime""--because gorgeous Jim with his sensational 17-year-old body will also be working there. Readers who aren't put off by Victoria's first-person, fluffball prattle are the very ones who will lick up the fast-reading, Baskin-Robbins-flavored story that follows: In Victoria's breathless words and with lots of easy conversation, teenage comings and goings, and beach and disco scenes, we hear how the divorc‚e Victoria works for overburdens her with chores while maintaining a cute, cajoling manner; how Jim does notice her (if only when his regular girlfriend is back in the city) but pushes her farther than she wants to go when they are alone on the pier after midnight; and how she finally rejects him for his friend Barry after the three teenagers go off in a boat to rescue Victoria's little charges and Jim's true spoiled selfishness shows up against the others' heroic actions. It's a predictable wise choice--but Victoria becomes easier to identify with as she eases up on the effusion and gets into the mother'shelper hassles and the boy-girl action.