cover image LBD: It's a Girl Thing

LBD: It's a Girl Thing

Grace Dent, . . Putnam, $15.99 (275pp) ISBN 978-0-399-24187-1

In British author Dent's fun, breezy novel, 14-year-old narrator Ronnie Ripperton and her two best friends (who collectively refer to themselves as "Les Bambinos Dangereuses or the LBD, as we're known universally") can't get permission to go to a summer rock concert, so they decide to throw their own, featuring the best bands from their school. They deal with funding problems, a negative headmaster and the band Catwalk, led by prima donna Panama Goodyear, whose members threaten to slander the LBD unless Catwalk is the headlining act. This all proves stressful for Ronnie, who anticipates a "potentially hideous, snowballing sense of personal failure." Making matters worse, her parents are fighting, and Jimi Steele, the guy of her dreams, has hooked up with the pretentious Panama. Though a funny and realistic narrator, Ronnie gets tongue-tied around Jimi, and fights with her dad over her revealing wardrobe. At her lowest point, she spends a weekend in bed reading a trashy novel—all of which she relates humorously in British slang. Readers will appreciate her friendships with the LBD's Fleur and Claude; the girls give each other a hard time occasionally, but when one of them has a problem, "there's three people feeling it." The ending comes as no surprise—and involves some events that stretch credibility—but, like the rest of the novel, it's satisfyingly entertaining all the same. Ages 12-up. (Sept.)