THE BERMUDEZ TRIANGLE

Warm, humorous, and smoothly readable story of three girls who’ve been friends forever. Nina, Avery, and Mel are the “Bermudez Triangle” (Bermudez being Nina’s last name). The summer before senior year of high school, Mel and Avery become a couple. Mel identifies as a lesbian, while Avery refuses to pick any label. The path of their relationship—from friends, to swooning girlfriends, to enemies, back to friends—involves Nina, too, and also their new friend Parker. Meanwhile Nina has an up-and-down, long-distance romance with an environmentalist, while Parker goes from unattainable crush to unattainable crush. Johnson writes Avery’s slight punkiness, Mel’s sweetness, and Nina’s burning drive to achieve with sympathy and color. Class issues come up sometimes, race almost never (despite Nina being interracial while everyone else is white). Sprinkled-in pop-culture references range from spot-on to easily dated, but the characterizations of love—different kinds—are tender even when painful. (Fiction. YA)