Liz and Sean, both beautiful and popular, are madly in love and completely misunderstood by their parents. Their best friends, Maggie and Dennis, are shy and awkward, but willing to take the first tentative steps toward a romance of their own. Yet before either couple can enjoy true happiness, life conspires against them, threatening to destroy their friendships completely.

CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 4.0 based on 30 reviews)

One for the girls

Liz and Sean seem to be a smooth and sophisticated senior high school couple. They introduce their awkward friends Maggie and Dennis to each other. Underneath the veneer of success Liz and Sean have problems with their parents and each other. Do their parents understand or even care about them? Are they ready for sex? Meanwhile can Maggie and Dennis learn to communicate enough to stay together?

This book is Paul Zindel's second and was first published way back in 1969. Life has changed since then, such as the free availability of legal abortion, but much of the story is still surprisingly relevant to modern life. Liz and Maggie are the main characters so this could be described as a book for girls, but the lives of Sean and Dennis are also described in important sub-plots. The story is basically a double romance but Zindel has too much of a grip on the ugliness of life to describe the book as 'romantic.' This is not Mills and Boon stuff.

To tell the truth I find this novel one of Zindel's less successful works. To my mind there is nothing in the story to make it really memorable. But then again Zindel is so far above other writers that I would certainly still recommend reading the novel. I should also add that I am largely interested in coming of age stories about boys, so maybe I am biased.

September 26, 2007

One for the girls

Raw and Real

I read this book when I was 12 and I read it at least once a year since then... Each time I read it I remember what it was like to be an akward teen going through the angst of my senior year. I've had friends like Liz and Sean and I was a Maggie once myself...
June 22, 2006

Not every teen rebels

I'm inclined to agree with Ramseelbird's review, and unlike indiegirl29, I don't recall Liz going out with another guy who nearly rapes her. What I do remember is teens in the 70s claiming to love this book, while I (maybe I wasn't savvy enough) just didn't get it. I sort of maybe guessed that her "friends" were accompanying Liz to have an abortion (didn't occur to me whether it was legal or not; I may not have even been aware of the issue of legality).
What struck me more was the unlikelihood of a pretty, cool girl being best friends with an uncool, homely girl. Never saw this in real life. Actually the most vivid memory I have of the story is when Liz calls home to say she'll be late, her stepfather calls her a tramp, and that's when she succumbs to Sean's pressure to have sex. This scenario is what is actually timeless in the story, as opposed to the rest of it.
The plot and atmosphere are indeed grim, which is indeed what bothered me. It's darker than any other teen / Young Adult novel I can think of. I certainly couldn't relate to any of the characters. I wasn't cool, didn't have a best friend who was cool, didn't have a boyfriend (pressuring or otherwise), and didn't have a stepparent. I suppose that's not Zindel's fault, but I do expect a fiction author to be able to cause the reader to feel what the characters are feeling, or sympathize with their situations. I suppose that's why I wouldn't recommend this book.

November 15, 2005

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