TTFN

Angela, Maddy and Zoe are totally BFF—best friends forever—and tell each other everything in their constant instant-message conversations. Well, maybe not everything. Zoe doesn’t tell Angela that she’s hooked up with Doug, who’s had a crush on Angela for ages. Zoe and Angela won’t tell Maddy how worried they are that she’s smoking pot to impress a boy. When Angela’s family moves to California, she’s heartbroken at being taken from everyone she knows. The friends try to stay in touch using IM, but Maddy’s obsessed with her new stoner friends and Angela and Zoe are fighting over Doug. As the three resolve their differences, they confront sex, drugs and the miserable difficulties of social life at 16. The well-crafted IM-lingo of the prose is richly saturated with contemporary references (googlewhacking, The OC, the Taliban) which, while they might prevent the novel from aging well, keep it perfectly placed in the moment. A funny and moving take on friendship and adolescence. (Fiction. 12-15)