LOVE, CAJUN STYLE

Here’s a quick-moving story focusing on a trio of high school girls coping with the tensions of sexuality in their small Louisiana town. Lucy’s intellectual friend Mary Jordan seems to have patched up a fight with her boyfriend, while their friend Evie appears to have found a true love, all as Lucy worries if she’ll ever find love. She especially worries that her intensely religious mother may be having an affair with an artist who has recently moved to town. Meanwhile, Lucy’s relationship with Dewey, the artist’s talented son, slowly moves in the right direction. Filled with playful vignettes of a fun-loving Cajun lifestyle, here’s a novel dealing with sexuality that can appeal to both conservative and liberal readers. Not all characters make good decisions, but the love of the three friends for each other heals wounds. Realistic, affecting and enjoyable throughout. (Fiction. YA)