MUST LOVE BLACK

Black-clad Philippa is plucky, sarcastic and not thrilled about her widowed father’s cheery new wife. When she spies an ad seeking a nanny who conveniently must love black, she jumps at the chance to spend the summer far from home. Her charges, also motherless, are twins who lead a joyless existence (their names are Triste and Rienne, loosely translated from the French as “sad” and “nothing”) inside their father’s spooky cliffside spa on the Maine coast, where they are forbidden to make their presence known to guests. Philippa sizes up the distance between the girls and their father and determines to foster a closer relationship, sidestepping the machinations of Lady Buena Verde, his mystical, iron-fisted new business partner, and having a few ghostly encounters along the way. McClymer employs a breezy tone that keeps things moving at a brisk and superficial pace, so that several questions remain unanswered at the predictable conclusion. Teens who identify with Philippa’s goth tendencies will likely forgive the loose ends. (Fiction. 12 & up)