THE BLACK BOOK [DIARY OF A TEENAGE STUD]

Laugh-out-loud funny, this engaging, high-concept novel about a 17-year-old boy’s world, both real and imaginary, is a story that teases, building up reader suspense and expectation then refusing to deliver. Jonah Black, a high-school senior, moves back to Florida to live with his mother and sister after being expelled from the private school he attended in Pennsylvania, where he lived with his dad. The most amusing parts deal with the hero’s whacked-out, beyond new-age mother, a kind of Dr. Ruth for the teenaged set, who has just penned the soon-to-be-bestselling tome, Hello Penis! Hello Vagina! Told in diary format, the tale is two-pronged: One details Jonah’s real-life woes—problems at home with Mom, being forced to repeat 11th grade, and his unrequited love for best friend Posie—the other his lurid, highly sexed fantasy life. The author has a sharp satirical eye, which he uses to good advantage so that Jonah’s factual and fictional life intersects in hilarious and imaginative ways. The secondary characters are all over the map in terms of consistency and clarity, but Jonah is a winning creation, and both boys and girls should be rooting for him all the way. However, caveat lector: Rather than resolving its plotlines, the story just stops cold in the middle of an exciting scene, leaving the hero in jeopardy and the reader in frustration. To be continued. (Fiction. YA)