Party
Grade 9 Up—This novel, told from multiple perspectives, is about an end-of-the-school-year party at a "typical" middle-class high school. The 11 narrators include an outcast, a skater, an immigrant's son, a jock, and a lady's man, among others. All of these teens have their own expectations for the gathering, and their reasons for going range from simply getting drunk to expressing their love to making new friends. The first character presented, Beckett, is immediately intriguing, and the format allows readers to get to know her (and all the other characters) through the eyes of more than one person, lending depth to the story. But sometimes this device means that information about a single character is simply repeated rather than enhanced by a new viewpoint. For this reason, readers may be left wanting more from one point of view when the story has already moved on to another (not necessarily a bad thing). The party is raucous and wild, culminating in a drunken flirtation (and subsequent rejection), a racially motivated fistfight, and the arrival of some friendly policemen to break it all up. This is a quick and entertaining read. Some strong language and sexual content make it most appropriate for older readers.—Nora G. Murphy, Los Angeles Academy Middle School(c) Copyright 2010.  Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc.  No redistribution permitted.