Pop! (review)

Marit is convinced that she is more than ready for sex, but her body keeps getting in her way. Every time things get hot and heavy with a guy, something happens to make her recoil and she runs away, repulsed, embarrassed, and still intact. Her solution to the problem is to turn her male friend Jamie into a friend-with-benefits. Jamie obliges, and after a few rather disappointing sessions, Marit comes to the blithe conclusion that sex is really no big deal and that with that hurdle leapt, she can now pursue a real relationship with the intriguing new guy, Noah. Unfortunately, Jamie has gotten his signals very crossed, and Marit suddenly finds herself without a best friend and without a boyfriend, since Noah, too, finds it confusing that Marit is dating him and sleeping with Jamie. A cafeteria showdown puts things on the right course for a reconciliation, and all's well, incredibly, that ends well. If Marit seems clueless as to the emotional train wreck she has orchestrated, it's likely because the characters here are drawn as thinly as cardboard cutouts; they have all the right external features, but no calculable motivations or credible feeling registers. Readers will be as surprised as Marit to find that Jamie actually has more-than-friend longings for her, and rereading for subtle clues turns up no new insights or veiled intimations. The writing is artless and pedestrian, but the real problem lies in the fact that Marit's problem and its solution are portrayed without emotional nuance or gains in self-understanding. Certainly teens deserve more credit for emotional complexity than they receive here, and better books as well.