EVERYTHING BEAUTIFUL

When overweight 16-year-old Riley Rose begins acting out after her mother’s death by seeing how many boys she can bed, her born-again dad sends her to Spirit Ranch Holiday Camp for a dose of morality. There she meets wheelchair-bound Dylan, who shares her anger and outsider status. Soon they are sneaking smokes, racing around in a stolen dune buggy and falling in love. By the end of the week, Riley is open to the idea of spirituality, if not orthodoxy, and is able to forgive some of her more unenlightened bunkmates through the miracle of Dylan’s acceptance. Most of the secondary characters are either underdeveloped or border on stereotype (pretty, mean girl, hot counselor cad, secretly gay camp director), and the multiple issues (weight, promiscuity, parental death, physical disability) threaten to overwhelm Riley’s funny, irreverent voice, which is full of righteous indignation for the “Chubby Con Carnes” of the world. However, Riley’s search for spiritual meaning is compelling and should appeal to fans of Robin Brande’s Evolution, Me and Other Freaks of Nature (2007). (Fiction. 13 & up)