What's in a Name

Wittlinger (Hard Love) convincingly creates 10 distinct teen voices, each of which takes a turn narrating a chapter. While the chapters offer readers only a glimpse of each character, several of them feature in the other teens' accounts, and bittersweet, even piercing musings run through many of the narratives (""It's as if my emotions are twice the size of normal people's,"" says one character, pained by unrequited love. ""I'm the Arnold Schwarzenegger of sensitivity""). The vignettes rally around a rather tenuous theme--everyone in Scrub Harbor is caught up in a war over the town's name. The wealthy population, the ""Follys,"" wants to change it to the more elegant Folly Bay, hoping to add value to their real estate; the poorer families, the ""Scrubs,"" want to maintain their traditions. Yet the teens' cogent reflections fortify the volume. They reveal what runs deeper than their ""Folly"" or ""Scrub"" moniker. The dialogue can feel like forced teen-speak in spots (""You talk like a frigging moron. Get a life, why don'tcha,"" the football star yells at his younger brother), but readers will likely respond to the realism of both the characters and their dilemmas. Ages 12-up. (Mar.)