Popular: Boys, Booze, and Jesus

Baldwin is a “new adult”: her memoir of her wild-child teenage years is written in retrospect with energy and sincerity. As a teenager, she drank heavily and slept around; she came from a comfortable and loving middle-class home but acted out against her family. Baldwin’s memoir is long on strong faith statements, but relatively lacking in psychological insight. The context of the Christian family in which she grew up is not much examined. Her mother, for example, is ill, but Baldwin says very little about what that meant. Her family’s reputation is occasionally referred to (“No one could believe that I, a member of the Stanfill family, wanted to get drunk”) but not explained well. More reflection might have broadened her audience. As it stands, her readers will be Christian teenagers in church youth groups, just as she once was. Still, Baldwin’s voice is distinctive and painfully honest, and her cautionary tale will speak to some in a big-sister way. Ages 14–up. Agency: Yates & Yates. (July) ■