CRASH TEST LOVE

Henry is “not the girlfriend type of guy.” He enjoys crashing Sweet Sixteen parties with his buddies Duke and Nigel and conning gullible, pretty girls into sex. When he meets Garrett, though, Henry rethinks his boyfriend potential. Garrett desperately wants to be accepted at her new high school in her senior year, and the key to that is the “J Squad” clique. The admission price is to hook Henry and then publicly dump him in retaliation for how he’s treated them. Predictably, Henry falls in love with Garrett, and she develops feelings for him, too. Their mutual love of motion pictures draws them together, but in the end, Garrett breaks up with Henry, although not for the J Squad. Henry is heartbroken but has the expected epiphanies about relationships, sex, etc. Neither Henry nor Garrett is particularly well developed, despite alternating first-person narrations (occasionally punctuated by script-like dialogue), nor is either especially likable. The movie-fan angle gives some novelty to a familiar story but not enough to make it more than mediocre escapism. (Fiction. 14 & up)