Reunited

Gr 8 Up—Alice Miller, 18, is excited when her parents refurbish her 1976 Volkswagen, aka the Pea Pod, as her graduation gift. The interior is still decorated with memorabilia from her favorite band, Level3. She has one thing in mind: to reunite with her ex-best friends, Summer Dalton and Tiernan O'Leary, who are also graduating. She invites them on a road trip where they will travel from their hometown of Walford, MA, to Austin, TX, to see a Level3 concert. Tiernan agrees to go in order to escape her mother and leaves without telling her; Summer decides to join Alice and Tiernan when her boyfriend suddenly breaks up with her. Like most road trips, nothing goes as planned and, mixing it with three ex-best friends, it turns into an adventure worth reading. Readers will chuckle, wonder, and believe that the events could probably happen even though some of them border on implausible. The characters are believable and typical teenage girls. While the ending is a bit clichéd, it's what readers will hope will happen for these girls, making it the perfect ending. There are a few sexual innuendos and some underage drinking, but nothing that mature middle school and high school students could not handle.—Karen Alexander, Lake Fenton High School, Linden, MI