In the summer after graduation, Autumn and Finny reconnect and are finally ready to be more than friends. Growing up, Autumn and Finny were like peas in a pod despite their differences: Autumn is “quirky and odd,” while Finny is “sweet and shy and everyone like him.” But in eighth grade, Autumn and Finny stop being friends due to an unexpected kiss. They drift apart and find new friends, but their friendship keeps asserting itself at parties, shared holiday gatherings and random encounters. The finely drawn characters capture readers’ attention in this debut.Īutumn and Phineas, nicknamed Finny, were born a week apart their mothers are still best friends.

In between these moments (and there are too many to effectively dog-ear only the good bits), the narrative frequently achieves moments of fine writing, character development, etc., but that’s hardly the point, is it? The point is that this, like sex, is all about good dirty fun.

The third-person limited perspective develops voice by shifting from boy to boy, going into graphic, slang-filled detail about the various bodily functions involved. Although this offering is being piously marketed at “Ages 16 up,” if kids can get their hands on it, it will do for this generation what Forever did for kids some 30 years ago (there’s even a Mr. Hilarity (cleaning up after a weekend party) alternates with bittersweet (the end of Dino’s parents’ marriage), and all three boys end the year wiser, if not necessarily better.

Dino unrequitedly pursues the gorgeous Jackie and simultaneously grapples with his mother’s affair Jon overcomes his worries about image to fall hard for the chubby-but-likable Deborah and, in the most provocative subplot, Ben desperately works to extricate himself from a liaison with a beautiful but predatory teacher. A trio of British teens fantasize, agonize, masturbate, grope, kiss, feel up, and shag their way through one seemingly endless school year in which traditional teen-novel concerns are entirely thrown over for sex.

Doing it by melvin burgess