Joss Whedon

Despite their vastly different personalities and families, Harper, Sophie, Becca, and Kate have been best friends for years. No matter what, they tell each other everything.

Well, almost everything. Harper was rejected from NYU, the only college to which she applied, and has been keeping this a secret from her friends and her parents for months. Right before her friends plan to take off for colleges all over the country, the truth comes out.

Well, kind of. Harper acts as though she has decided not to go to NYU, preferring to stay home and write the next Great American Novel. She thinks this quasi-admission will shock her friends, but their reactions shock her even more: two of them decide to follow her example and take a year off from college to chase their own capital-D Dreams.

From there on, the story follows each girl in turn. Each storyline is given equal time and attention, switching back and forth every few pages. This format will be familiar to fans of The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants.

Sophie wants to be a famous actress. As luck would have it, her mom’s old friend lives with her husband in Beverly Hills and allows Sophie to stay at the guesthouse rent-free. Sophie’s landlords are quite busy and have good connections, giving her total freedom and helping her snag some auditions. Sophie befriends Sam, an aspiring actor who takes care of the pool and does odd jobs around the place, and , a famous actor who gets her a line in a movie and steals her heart. If you like Sophie’s storyline, read The 310 series by Beth Killian.

Kate’s post-high-school plans were supposed to be set in stone: Go to Harvard with her long-time boyfriend, study hard and get good grades in an effort to live up to her parents’ high expectations. Harper’s big plan makes Kate realize she has no plan of her own. Europe calls out to her, so she books a plane ticket and packs her bags. As her boyfriend drops her off at the airport, he breaks up with her. She heads off to her big trip feeling more alone than ever. While she travels, she attempts to work her way through a list of 100 tasks ("Touch the Berlin Wall," "Take the water," "Stomp grapes") created by her friends and her younger adopted sister Habiba. If you like Kate’s story, read 13 Little Blue Envelopes by Maureen Johnson.

Becca heads off to Middlebury as planned, wanting to wow the school’s coach with her skiing ability. He coached an Olympic team and she wants to impress him more than anything. She ends up getting on his bad side during the first practice and staying there for quite some time. Not only that, but small pratfalls evolve into bigger disasters, snowballing into something she never could have seen coming. Somewhere along the way, she manages to do the one thing her friends challenged her to do: fall in love. If you like Becca’s story, read the Love Bukowski series by Emily Franklin.

Meanwhile, Harper finds herself staring at a blank computer screen. Now living in her parents’ basement and told that she must pay rent, she takes a job at a local coffeehouse. An old classmate, Judd, becomes an unlikely friend. The twenty-three-year-old English teacher she crushed on in high school becomes a regular customer - and maybe something more. Now if she could only manage to actually write something . . . If you like Harper’s story, read That Summer by Sarah Dessen.

The book covers three months in the lives of four teenage girls. As any teenager can tell you, that is both a very short and a very long period of time. During those three months, the characters are each granted a new kind of independence, but manage to come back together. If only all friendships were truly this strong, and we were all afforded the freedom (and, for the most part, incredibly good luck and easy resolutions) these girls were given.

For BtVS/Angel fans: This book is strictly realistic drama. No vampires, no monsters, nothing supernatural. However, if you liked the teen turmoil/college-and-not-college issues aspect of BtVS, you might like that aspect of this story.