THE HALF-LIFE OF PLANETS

“I am not a slut,” says Liana Planet (pronounce pluh-net) in the attention-grabbing first line of this fine romantic comedy. She has a reputation for loving to kiss, and many boys have been the beneficiaries of her passion. It has never taken her beyond locking lips, however, and now she’s experimenting on herself this summer: Can she become a new person and leave her kissing-bandit ways behind? An aspiring scientist doing planetary research, Liana understands planets and their predictable orbits and patterns; it’s people she doesn’t always get. Nor does Hank, a teenager with Asperger’s syndrome who gets music but can’t read social cues. Put them together, telling their stories in alternating first-person narratives, and the result is a story laced with intelligent humor, well-drawn characters—even the secondary ones—and believable situations. There’s melodrama here and some clichéd scenes, but these are high-school students after all, and readers will find themselves cheering for the proper alignment of these star-crossed lovers. (Fiction. YA)