Bloom (review)

It seems like Lauren's got it made: at seventeen, she's finally entered the popular crowd, as the adored girlfriend of the handsome, kind, and considerate It Guy Dave. Now she and her friend Katie, who's dating sports star Marcus, sit at the in lunch table and always have a party to go to, and Lauren doesn't have to spend time in her empty house listening to apologetic phone messages from her distant, workaholic father. She feels like something's missing, though, and she discovers what it is when Evan Kirkland joins her class; back when she and Evan were little, his mother was involved with her father and the two kids became close friends, but his return evokes in her a desire for a much deeper and more romantic bond. Soon she's leading a double life, playing Dave's happy and predictable girlfriend and Katie's chipper buddy while she's secretly seeing Evan. This is a spicy and emotional blend of new realism and old-style romance. Lauren is believably struggling with the legacy of a deserting mom and her conviction that succumbing to emotion merely leads to disaster, even as she denies how much she's betraying both Dave, by cheating, and Katie, by emotionally absenting herself from the friendship. Her encounters with Evan, though, are described in lusciously torrid prose that's thoroughly enjoyable in its own right as well as marking Lauren's unaccustomed letting down of her guard: "He is standing there silent and bruised, and I have been reckless, I have been worse than reckless, and I want it all and more again." While Scott is more merciful to her straying protagonist than readers might have been (Dave accepts the truth with sadness but no anger, and Katie immediately forgives Lauren), those who have followed Lauren's delicious dilemma will adore seeing her so wrong she's finally right and firmly in the arms of the guy who inspired her growth.