PERFECT COUPLE

Harper, the official yearbook photographer, has a boyfriend but secretly crushes on Brody, the drop-dead-handsome football star. What happens when a silly student poll teams them up as the “Perfect Couple That Never Was”?

True, her romance with Kennedy hasn’t been going well. Kennedy picks fights with her just before they have dates, and he pushes her around in his job as yearbook editor. Brody isn’t single either, and he can’t seem to keep his hands off his girlfriend in public. But Harper has a job to do, and one of her assignments is to photograph the “Superlatives,” couples chosen by the students in secret ballots. And even though Brody has a girlfriend, he comes on to her—and she responds. When she has a furious fight with a jealous Kennedy in front of a roomful of their friends, things really go awry. Can she have a real relationship with Brody after all—or does he only care about her looks, now that she’s ditched her glasses and started wearing attractive clothes? Meanwhile, her parents are in the middle of a nasty divorce, and her grandfather behaves like a hermit. Echols focuses on Harper’s inner turmoil as she pens a better-than-average high school romance caper. She has fun highlighting many of Harper’s mistakes, but she also gives secondary characters unexpected complexity.

It adds up to fairly typical adolescent angst with a bit of insight on top. (Romance. 12-16)