Stephie Davis Who Needs Boys?

Who Needs Boys?

Stephie Davis

In Massachusetts, fourteen years old Allie Morrison looks forward to spending the summer with her father in Los Angeles. Since her parents divorced, she rarely sees him. For that matter she never sees her mother either though she lives with her. Mom is too busy at work or on dates so Allie lives on frozen pizza. While she is in California, her best friends, Blue, Natalie, and Frances all have jobs at Sam's Farm Stand, run and owned by Latin schoolteacher Sam Novak.

The day before she is to fly to the West Coast, her father cancels the trip claiming his pregnant wife is ailing. A despondent Allie has no mom around to empathize with her. Allie manages to get work at Sam's Farm Stand. Sam assigns her to work with his younger brother Tad who is Allie's age. He is nasty to her besides being too young; his eighteen years old brother Rand is much nicer towards her and the right age. As Allie adjusts to field work from being a teen Fashionista, her three friends bet stuffed bras as to whether she becomes the girlfriend of the younger brother.

WHO NEEDS BOYS? is a fabulous young teen angst tale starring a terrific lock key protagonist. The storyline focuses on Allie, inadvertently abandoned by her parents, but the consequences of feeling discarded are powerful and deftly described in her philosophy of life: be dumped or do the dumping rather quickly. Though a confrontation with mom deals to easily with the estrangement, young adults will appreciate Stephie Davis' fine tale that requires Natalie the runner needing a boyfriend, preferably a non-athletic nerd.

Smooch, May 2005, $5.99, 193 pp.

ISBN: 0843953977

Harriet Klausner