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CITY LOVE by Susane Colasanti

CITY LOVE

From the City Love series, volume 1

by Susane Colasanti

Pub Date: April 21st, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-06-230768-2
Publisher: Katherine Tegen/HarperCollins

Three teenage girls take on the Big Apple when they share an apartment during the summer before freshman year in college.

Their various quests for meaning and romance in their lives play out against the backdrop of the city that never sleeps. Native New Yorker Sadie, warmhearted and grounded, asserts that “New York City is my boyfriend.” An aspiring urban designer, she wants to create spaces in which “people rejuvenate and connect,” and she shares her passion with a boy she meets in her internship. Californian Darcy, wealthy, entitled and promiscuous, has trouble figuring out what she really wants. A previous bad relationship has made her wary of commitment, so when she feels herself attracted to a street performer, she backs away and indulges in more casual hookups. Rosanna has more pressing problems. Her decision to come to New York with a huge social conscience but only pennies in her pocket makes it hard for her to stick to her principles when she is romanced by independently wealthy Donovan (who goes by D). Although the street-smart dialogue grates at times, the alternating voices of the three protagonists are clearly differentiated, and some real issues are highlighted through their different circumstances. Dramatic if sometimes-forced plot twists that pop up in the final pages of the novel will presumably be further developed in Book 2.

Smart girl chick-lit.

(Fiction. 14-18)