WHO YOU WIT’?

The latest offering in the Del Rio Bay series finds sophomore best friends Mina, Lizzie, Jacinta and Kelly facing prom season. Lizzie draws up a virginity pact that gets her boyfriend Todd steamed in the worst possible way. Mina and Jacinta, already sexually active with their graduating senior boyfriends, opt out. Meanwhile Kelly, the clique’s sole single girl, is torn between bad boy Angel and Greg, a jock she is tutoring. When Jacinta’s period is two weeks late, and Lizzie learns that Mina has turned in her “v-card,” events are set in motion that threaten the friendship. Everything comes to a head on prom night, and the girls must deal with the consequences of their adult choices. The book’s strengths include authentic contemporary dialogue, complete with IMs and text messages, as well as clear distinctions among the personalities of each girl. Some teen readers may object to the sermonizing at the end, where adult characters who are largely absent in the rest of the story step in to render judgment, and the narrative seems to drop both Lizzie and the pact toward the end. Nevertheless, this is a fresh contemporary friendship story and worth the read. (Fiction. YA)