FLAWLESS

Cyrano gets a sex change and goes to high school.

Seventeen-year-old academic superstar Sarah is perfect except for a nose that’s so enormously large it literally stops traffic in her high school’s hallways. BFF Kristen is not nearly so bright, but she’s beautiful, a gifted, fashion-forward shopper, and she definitely knows how to work a room. When Adonis-like newcomer Rock (really!) shows up, both girls fall head-over-heels for him, but Sarah is his intellectual soul mate. Reluctantly, she does what friends are supposed to do—or at least what Kristen guilts her into thinking friends should do: She writes all of the e-mails, love letters and text messages her not-so-bright friend sends, as well as tutoring her on literary and cultural topics. Each chapter begins with a relevant quote on the true nature of beauty, messages Sarah ought to be thinking about, since the walls she’s believably built around herself to fend off nose critics have fenced out nearly everyone. While it pushes credibility that Rock doesn’t detect the deceit and Kristen isn’t sufficiently sensitive to notice Sarah’s lust for him, the trying situation is amusing enough to sustain interest, in spite of the worn-out concept (though teens in the know may feel that both Edmond Rostand and Steve Martin did it better).

A teen romance with a little heart, it pushes past other formulaic efforts…by a nose. (Romance. 11 & up)