SURF MULES

At the end of their senior year, three Southern California teenage surfers mark time while seeking the Perfect Monster Wave. Logan, Z-Boy and Fin, once known as the Three Musketeers, have drifted apart due to Fin’s surfing stardom. Logan and Z-Boy simply hang loose and smoke weed. When Fin tragically drowns, Logan and Z-Boy are awash with grief. Needing quick cash, they fall back on what they know and are hired as drug mules to drive a car stuffed with pot from Los Angeles to Orlando. Fueled by junk food and Mountain Dew, the journey starts off cool, but their friendship unravels under the stress of performing a felony. Neri sandwiches his story between a crackling opening and a whipsaw climactic scene, but jumbled sideplots cause some sagging around the middle, in which the happy-go-lucky tone seems out of step with the serious situation. Still, older boys who say they’ve never read anything will be attracted to the novel’s profanity, prodigious amounts of pot and friendship on the brink of disaster. (Fiction. YA)