Tuesday, November 13, 2007



Sloppy Firsts
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Second Helpings

by Megan McCafferty

A friend of mine who also reads quite a bit of teen fiction turned me on to this series. It's kind of racy, in that it doesn't shy away from sexual topics or language, and yet it's totally not explicit at all. In fact, it's frustratingly inexplicit if, like me, you actually want to read the sex bits. Oddly, my library has these books cataloged in adult fiction, but I just checked three other library systems that, with the exception of a single branch, have it cataloged in young adult.

So what's so great about another series about the dating/sex-life woes and family travails of a suburban teenager? Partly it's that flirting-with-the-edge-of-naughtiness aspect, but I also appreciated that the protagonist is (academically) smart without being the stereotypical geeky girl who gets a makeover. Best of all is the boy she falls for — cuz, honey, I fell for him too! He's also smart, but he's a bad boy too. Is there anything hotter?

I'm a little wary going into the third book, since high school is over and the star-crossed lovers are going to different colleges. It took two whole books to bag the hot bad boy, and I don't know if I'm ready to move on. We shall see. Yes. We shall. (That's an inside joke that you'll only get after you read Second Helpings.)