UNEXPECTED DEVELOPMENT

Generously busted Megan has two primary goals for the summer: to have breast-reduction surgery before her sophomore year begins, and to somehow, some way, nab dreamy Jake Darrow, the guy she’s had a crush on since seventh grade. The surgery isn’t so complicated; she can make the appointment herself without telling her parents. Getting Jake proves tougher though, especially since he’s practically engaged to bombshell Savannah Robins. But when Megan finds out Savannah’s on vacation all summer, and Jake just happens to work in the same pancake house as she, she can’t help but seize the opportunity to pursue him. Perez’s first attempt at the romance genre opens with a bang as its punchy, in-your-face narrator begins her original story as a How I Spent My Summer Vacation essay. However, the big boob jokes grow old quickly, and a pedophilia subplot causes the otherwise clever and quirky romance to unravel. Perez eventually wraps up too many issues way too quickly, ultimately rendering a potentially provocative love story into a sanitizingly unsatisfying issue piece. (Fiction. YA)