when i was a teen, i read some of sandra scoppettone's adolescent fiction and enjoyed it. so when i found her books for an adult audience in the library, i was looking forward to reading them. i took this one out and found it to be such a puerile effort that i couldn't even finish it. the characters are shallow, badly drawn, and appear to be used by the author to service the particular plot twists with no adherence to what their underlying motivation would logically be. the story is confusing and not very interesting, with the result that the reader doesn't really care what happens. the main character possesses no particular charisma - her single defining trait appears to be a propensity to gauge waiting time in exaggerated terms (i.e., "after 100 hours the elevator finally arrived on the third floor") - a bit of attempted cuteness that wasn't particularly clever the first time, and was downright annoying the 30th. i don't care what anybody's sexual preference is, but this book, and the favorable reviews it has gotten, bother me because i feel that it has not been evaluated badly simply because the main character is gay - affirmative action, if you will. i have written material on a par or better than this that i rejected as being hopelessly sophomoric and certainly not worthy of publication. i think sandra scoppettone should be embarrassed.
