Sex. Have I gotten your attention? Just one little word, but it has the power to drive our hormone-ridden bodies crazy at the most inopportune moments! It seems like we spend a great deal of time as teenagers thinking about the things we could, would and sometimes shouldn’t do with our bodies. And that’s not anyone’s fault, that’s just the way it is for teens. Your body is changing and shooting off hormones like fireworks on a daily basis. During this time in your life, it’s pretty normal to think about love and sex more than the average human being does. Falling in love for the first time, and the physical, feel-good things that go along with it like kissing, touching, and sometimes more, can be wonderful and exciting, but also a little scary. That’s why it’s beneficial to arm yourself with knowledge about your body and feelings. Books like Lynda Madaras’s What’s Happing to My Body?, the Underground Guide to Teenage Sexuality or Changing Bodies, Changing Lives: a book for teens on sex and relationships can really help you understand what’s going on both inside and outside your bod. You can also relieve some of that emotional stress by reading stories about teens who have gone through these experiences. The books listed below are fiction stories about both girls and guys dealing with love and sex, often for the first time in their lives. The authors have done a pretty good job explaining how these teens handled their desires and what the consequences of their decisions were. And even though it feels like a century until your sixteenth birthday, keep in mind that childhood and adolescence go by fast! Sex and love are just two of the many first time experiences you may have as a teen, so don’t be in too big of a hurry to experience them. Take the time to learn and grow so that your first time happens at the right time for you.
Virgin Run
The Sky is Everywhere by Jandy Nelson
03.20
Seventeen-year-old Lennie has felt completely lost since her older sister Bailey, aspiring actress and all around amazing gal, died suddenly from a heart arrhythmia right in the middle of play practice. Always in Bailey’s shadow, now shy Lennie doesn’t know how to be in the sun without her big sis. Further complicating matters is the fact that the sisters were raised by Gram and hippie Uncle Big because their mom left town when they were tots and hasn’t been heard from since. Gram is convinced that one day she’ll return, but Bailey dreads ever seeing her now and having to tell her she is abruptly, horribly one daughter short. Then there’s Lennie’s love life, which shouldn’t matter like a time like this, but is absurdly taking center stage. For a girl who’s barely kissed a boy, she suddenly has two ardent beaus on her hands: French songwriter Joe Fontaine whose long eyelashes and composing skills make her heart sing, and skater boy Toby, whose passionate kisses ease the pain of Baily’s passing—because he also happens to have been Bailey’s boyfriend. “I kiss him back and don’t want to stop because in that moment I feel like Toby and I together have somehow…reached across time, and pulled Bailey back.” Yeah. As you can clearly see, it’s a mess. What do you say to a heartbroken boy who whispers, “I just want to be near you. It’s the only time I don’t die missing her.” ? Full of shame, guilt, lust and fear, Lennie juggles both boys, while trying to discover who she really loves and who she really is without Bailey to lead the way. “How can something this momentous be happening to me without her? And what about all the momentous things to come? How will I go through each and every one of them without her?”
What’s so unusual and super interesting about this debut tearjerker is Jandy Nelson’s fearless acknowledgment and exploration of the presence of sexual feelings in the midst of grief, and how these feelings can come on strong as a reaction against death. Lustful longings during a time of mourning are inconvenient and embarrassing to say the least, and Nelson captures that beautifully in Lennie’s shamefaced voice: “I am totally out of control. I do not think this is how normal people mourn.” These feelings, which come up at the most inappropriate times, also show how Lennie is developing as a person separate from her sister. In many ways, grief and her subsequent sexual awakening are making her over into a whole new being: “..what if somewhere inside I prefer this? What if as much as I fear having death as a shadow, I’m beginning to like how it quickens the pulse, not only mine, but the pulse of the whole world.” While I don’t think Sky has knocked Before I Fall out of the top weepy chick lit spot in my heart, it came pretty darn close. There’s some trailing plot threads that didn’t get tied up to my satisfaction, and some characters I would have liked to have seen more of (like mean Rachel, who I imagined looking like a blonde Lea Michele from Glee) But Nelson has a way with words, and certain phrases caught my attention and tugged at my heart, like this poignant expression about why Lennie has to stop hanging out with Toby, no matter how comfortable it is: “We can’t keep wrapping our arms around a ghost.” If you liked the weeptastic Broken Soup or Would You, you’ll definitely want to laugh and sob your way through Sky.
Guyaholic by Carolyn Mackler
06.08
V is an addict. But not to any of the usual things: food, drugs, alcohol. No, V’s not an alcoholic—she’s a guyaholic. Every time V is reminded of the fact that her mom Aimee dumped V on her grandparents so she could chase yet another romantic interest across the country, V ends up seeking her own hottie to drown her sorrows in. Until she is hit in the head with a hockey puck and comes to in the arms of gentle Sam, the first boy who wants to be more to her than just another make-out partner. But V’s addiction is strong, and she ends up breaking Sam’s heart just when she needs him the most. V decides the only way to purge her feelings of anger and loss towards her mother is to find Aimee and force her to spend time with only daughter. But on her way to her mom, V ends up taking an entirely different journey where she discovers the secret to curing her addiction and the way back into Sam’s arms. This short, sassy companion novel to Mackler’s Vegan Virgin Valentine manages to be caustically funny, while imparting the very important message that you can only run from your feelings for so long before you must deal! V is a train wreck for sure, but a very funny one, and will leave many readers nodding in recognition over her self-destructive but completely understandable behavior.
Story of a Girl by Sara Zarr
05.03
When Deanna Lambert is thirteen, her dad catches her making out and more with seventeen year old Tommy Webber, in Tommy’s car. The story quickly got out in her small town, mostly due to Tommy’s big mouth. Now it’s three years later and she and Tommy are ancient history, but Deanna still can’t shake the hateful label of “school slut.” No matter what she does or where she goes, she sees the smirks and hears the whispers of people who just won’t let the story die. But at least those people are strangers. What’s worse is that Deanna’s own father still can’t seem to forgive her. It will be up to Deanna to force her father to see that she’s not that naive girl anymore, but a young woman who’s sick of being punished and ready to take back her reputation. Like Laura Ruby’s Good Girls, Story of a Girl is an insightful, though terrifying look at how quickly we punish girls in our society for acting on sexual urges, or falling for an older boy’s persuasive line. Make sure to share this Story with as many girl (and boy!) friends as possible!
The Wish House by Celia Rees
05.03
Richard is a shy, lonely boy just looking for a friend to spend the long summer days with while his family camps in the hills of Wales. He finds that friend in Clio, a beautiful, precocious girl whose artistic family and bohemian ways are at odds with the conventional life Richard leads. Still, Richard is bewitched by Clio’s beauty and gets caught up in her elaborate game of make-believe, which starts out with them acting out ancient mythological stories, but always ends with them making love in some secluded area of the woods. Soon, Richard is completely smitten with Clio, visiting everyday at her family’s ramshackle summer cottage that Richard has dubbed The Wish House. But then he discovers a dark secret about her family that causes him to commit a terrible act of destruction. Will Clio ever forgive him? Can Richard forgive himself? This sensuous, psychological read manages to be seriously steamy without getting gratuitously graphic. While this ripping good romance doesn’t exactly have a happy ending, older teen readers will appreciate Rees’s unflinching portrayal of the perils of first love, and her thorough examination of betrayal, consequence and redemption through the lives of these two passionate and completely real characters.
Good Girls by Laura Ruby
05.03
Audrey is a straight-A student who lives to study, run the stage crew for all her school theatrical productions, and please her parents. So when a nasty someone uses their picture phone to snap a photo of Laura doing something with hot boy Luke DeSalvio that good girls just don’t do (or at least, don’t admit to) and then sends the photo to EVERYONE, including Audrey’s PARENTS, Audrey’s good-girl-world crumbles into a thousand little pixels that form and re-form on computer screens and cell phones all over town. Audrey has two choices—accept her new “bad girl” reputation, or use her experience to make her peers understand that underneath all the labels, she is just A GIRL, making the same decisions about her life and her body as everyone else. Who decides who’s a good girl and who isn’t? Audrey will soon find out as she journeys from good girl, sad girl, angry girl, to finally, REAL GIRL. Laura Ruby’s wonderfully nuanced book thoughtfully deconstructs the teenage mythology of good girls, bad boys, “sluts” and “players”, providing readers with a clear understanding of the difference between following your heart and falling prey to your hormones.
A Bad Boy Can Be Good for a Girl by Tanya Lee Stone
05.03
Josie’s a smart girl. She knows the score—how some senior boys try to “get some” off of “freshmeat” girls, how some freshmen girls measure their worth by whether or they have a upperclassman boyfriend. But Josie’s not like that. Neither is Nicollete or Aviva. So how is it that they all end up dating the same hot shot senior and falling for his sweet line of bullsh*t? After Josie learns the hard way just how bad this boy is, she jots down a warning about him to other girls on the back pages of the school library’s copy of Forever, and word begins to get around. Soon, other girls are adding their stories to her warning, and Josie, Nic, and Viv find that they are not alone—this boy’s been busy! Can some good actually come from getting your heart broken by a bad boy? 3 smart girls + 1 slick senior boy = 1 sharply observed novel about sex, sisterhood, and self-knowledge.
Forever by Judy Blume
05.03
Considered the first young adult novel to discuss teenage sexuality in a way that didn’t “punish” the characters for having sex (nobody gets pregnant or sick from STDs) Forever is the story of Katherine and Michael, two teens who fall in love and embark on a sexual relationship together. For Katherine, it’s her first time, and she spends a lot of novel deciding if sex is right for her at this point in her life. She asks her friends, subtly brings it up to her parents, and researches birth control methods. After looking at all the factors, Katherine and Michael decide bring sex into their tender, romantic, and often funny relationship. Forever was written in 1975, but because Judy Blume deals so realistically with the issue of teen sexuality, it never seems to age. The author has added a forward to the latest re-printings of the book where she discusses the danger of HIV and AIDS, a serious problem that Katherine and Michael didn’t have to worry about in 1975. I’ll say no more except that some of the adults in your life who were teens in the 80′s may have a story about passing Forever around at school and giggling over the part about “Ralph.” After reading Forever, you’ll never be able to hear that name without chuckling, just a little, too!