Product Description

Josie, Nicolette, and Aviva all get mixed up with a senior boy–a cool, slick, sexy boy who can talk them into doing almost anything he wants. In a blur of high school hormones and personal doubt, each girl struggles with how much to give up and what ultimately to keep for herself. How do girls handle themselves? How much can a boy get away with? And in the end, who comes out
on top? A bad boy may always be a bad boy. But this bad boy is about to meet three girls who won’t back down.


From the Hardcover edition.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #501471 in Books
• Published on: 2007-06-12
• Released on: 2007-06-12
• Original language: English
• Dimensions: .41 pounds
• Binding: Paperback
• 240 pages

From School Library Journal
Starred Review. Grade 9 Up–Three girls succumb to the charms of one sexy high school senior and emerge wiser for the experience in this energetic novel in verse. Josie is a self-assured freshman who values her girlfriends over boys until a hot jock focuses his attention on her and her simmering hormones break into a full boil. Confused by her behavior, yet unable to control her desire, she acts out every romantic cliché she has ever disdained, until the boy drops her and she experiences the chill of rejection. It is Judy Blume's Forever that sparks Josie's fire again, and finding a few blank pages at the back of the library's copy, she sends a warning to the girls of her school. Next readers meet Nicolette, a junior who sees her sexuality as power. A loner, she's caught by surprise at her own reaction when this popular boy takes notice of her. Suddenly she thinks she sees the difference between sex and love, and then, just as suddenly, he's gone. Finally, Aviva, a pretty, smart, artsy, and funny senior, is stunned when the jock seems to want her. She gives up her virginity, only to be disappointed in both the sex and the boy. Furious, Aviva heads to the library to check out Forever, now crammed with the words of girls who suffered the same fate at the hands of the same boy. The free verse gives the stories a breathless, natural flow and changes tone with each narrator. The language is realistic and frank, and, while not graphic, it is filled with descriptions of the teens and their sexuality. This is not a book that will sit quietly on any shelf; it will be passed from girl to girl to girl.–Susan Oliver, Tampa-Hillsborough Public Library System, FL
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
Gr. 10--12. "Sweetie, we call it making love, they don't." Three girls experience heartbreak after a nameless jock dumps each of them. Josie, a freshman, is devastated when she overhears, "Have you nailed her yet?" She escapes with her virginity intact, alerting future victims by scribbling a warning on the blank pages of the library's copy of Judy Blume's Forever. Nicolette, a junior, declares that sex is all about power: "If I say who / and I say when / and I say what / then I/ have it." She's dismayed when she realizes she's not in control this time. Aviva, a senior, loses her virginity after ignoring her friend's warning: "He's^B not^B different. He's playing you.^B" Stone's novel in verse, more poetic prose than poetry, packs a steamy, emotional wallop, and naked dips in a hot tub, oral sex, and sex in a car suggest a mature audience, even though the sex isn't graphic. The lessons learned here, however, are important: the girls realize they'll be hurt again, but they are now "Forewarned / Forearmed / Forever." Cindy Dobrez
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review
“Three girls succumb to the charms of one sexy high school senior and emerge wiser for the experience in this energetic novel in verse. . . The free verse gives the stories a breathless, natural flow and changes tone with each narrator. The language is realistic and frank, and, while not graphic, it is filled with descriptions of the teens and their sexuality. This is not a book that will sit quietly on any shelf; it will be passed from girl to girl to girl.”–School Library Journal, Starred Review

“This amazing first novel is one of the most honest treatments of teenage sexuality to be found in YA fiction. . . . This will be much talked about, and every reader who has been swept away in a love affair will recognize its truth.”–Kliatt

“The kind of tell-it-like-it-is wisdom that comes from your best girlfriends. It’s irresistible.”–Libba Bray, New York Times bestselling author of A Great and Terrible Beauty and Rebel Angels

“Candid free-verse novel . . . electrically charged.”–The Horn Book Magazine

“Stone's novel in verse, more poetic prose than poetry, packs a steamy, emotional wallop. . . . The lessons learned here, however, are important.”–Booklist

“It's fantastic–hip, edgy, and addicting. Sometimes funny, sometimes heartbreaking, always real. Sure to be the new Forever.”–Cynthia Leitich Smith, award-winning author

“Every high-school age girl in the world needs to read this book, before they meet the proverbial bad boy.”–Teens Read Too!

“3 smart girls + 1 slick senior boy = 1 sharply observed novel about sex, sisterhood, and self-respect.”–Reading Rants!

A Bill's Best Book chosen by ALAN–the Assembly on Literature for Adolescents of the National Council of Teachers of English


“The next Vagina Monologues, . . . for the teen crowd.”–Donna Freitas, Belief.net columnist and author of Becoming a Goddess of Inner Poise


“Stone's intimate and honest work accurately depicts both the agony and ecstasy of teenage relationships from the inside out.”–VOYA, 4Q, 4P


From the Hardcover edition.