Nothing
by Annie Barrows
High School    Greenwillow    212 pp.
9/17    978-0-06-266823-3    $17.99
e-book ed.  978-0-06-266825-7    $9.99

High school BFFs Charlotte and Frankie are convinced they’d be terrible YA novel protagonists because nothing ever happens to them: their parents are still alive, they’re not suicidal, they don’t have wild sex with either boys or other girls. Nevertheless, Charlotte decides to write their life story for a school project: “It’ll be, like, a searing document of today’s youth and how incredibly boring our lives are!” Chapters alternate between Charlotte’s first-person perspective and an omniscient third-person narration that mainly follows Frankie, who’s occasionally not joined at the hip with Charlotte. There are plot points — Charlotte flirts via text with a boy she’s never met; Frankie learns how to drive; the friends throw themselves a fancy New Year’s Eve party — but the story is mainly character-driven. The book isn’t as young as the cover suggests, and the girls aren’t too goody-goody: they both swear, drink a bit, and occasionally, casually smoke pot. Frankie also has a weirdly charged encounter and kiss with an older friend of her brother’s. (Frankie: “It was just a great moment.” Charlotte: “Not a plot twist that’s going to change the rest of your life?” Frankie: “It makes me feel like things I don’t expect can actually happen. And like life is going to get more interesting than it is right now.”) Barrows, author of the Ivy + Bean chapter book series, has a knack for female friendships, and Charlotte and Frankie are a memorable pair.

From the January/February 2018 issue of The Horn Book Magazine.