Grade 7-10-Avid reader Irene, 14, keeps a sketchbook of famous literary hairdos for her future salon, Heroine Hairstyles, to be located in L.A., about as far from New Jersey as she can get. Things go awry when she's let go three weeks into her summer job at her mother's beauty shop. Forced to take unglamorous work babysitting two fidgety kids, the teen ignores her friends' e-mails (they're on interesting vacations), is impatient with her young charges, and generally feels sorry for herself. At Larkin's Pond, she meets gorgeous lifeguard Starla Malloy and becomes fascinated by her looks and cutting attitude. Irene tries to cultivate a friendship with the girl and suddenly life goes from dreary to exciting. Starla scoffs at Irene's literary interests but uses a blog to write bad poetry to D, the boyfriend who dumped her, and to make veiled (and atrociously misspelled) digs at Irene. Summer gets more complicated when the latest of Irene's mother's volatile, drifter boyfriends takes off and the teen is left trying to console the heartbroken woman. As she gets in deeper with Starla, who is obsessing over her ex-boyfriend's rejection, Irene finds herself attracted to the young man who spurned the lovely but spiteful lifeguard. Sometimes the protagonist acts like a typical teen and at others she seems too wise and well read for her age, but Griffin has created vivid scenes, believable dilemmas, and satisfyingly human characters in this novel of self-discovery.-Roxanne Myers Spencer, Western Kentucky University, Bowling Green
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Gr. 7-10. Irene loves hair and plans to open a salon someday. In the meantime, she combines her stylist yearnings with her love of literature, drawing hairdos from great novels in her ever-present sketchpad. After she flops at washing hair at her mother's beauty shop, she's forced to take a job babysitting. It's at the beach, where she takes the kids to swim, that she first observes lifeguard Starla, a beautiful drama queen on whom she gets a girl crush. Soon Irene is checking out Starla's blog, and she quickly realizes that Starla has noticed her--and appointed her the Witness, the person who will observe her vengeance against D., the boyfriend who dumped her. The role includes Irene's watching Starla key D.'s car. With Starla so hung up on D., it's disconcerting for Irene to realize that D. is interested in her. The operative words here are light and fluffy, but since the writer is the talented Griffin, the book is much better than most chick lit. The characters, young and old, are all neatly, if not broadly drawn, and readers will have lots of fun with this. Ilene Cooper
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