Title for a YAL girl's teen novel?

January 5, 2007 3:47 PM

Everybody hates this, but I need help identifying a book so I can "rebuild" a preteen, YAL library...

My older sister had a slew of young adult books in our shared bedroom which she read casually and I secretly read when she was not around. The usual suspects were present-- Franny and Zooey, The Chocolate Wars, A Separate Peace, Pardon Me You Are Stepping On My Eyeball, Mr. and Mrs. Bo Jo Jones, Summer of Fear, Tiger Eyes, Where Has Deedee Wooster Been All These Years, a mess of V.C. Andrews books...the list goes on.
I want to get as many of these as I can remember so that I can give them to her as a half-goofy gift.

There is one book I cannot identify, however, but the illicit rush reading of my sister's books has burned this much into my brain:

The main character meets a guy playing in a band at the shopping mall, pretends she is older and carries around a paper bag of "mature" clothes she changes into at school so she can meet him later. It was pretty racy -- in the vein of Judy Blume, etc.

The seventeen year old boy she likes and dates is named Michael.
She told him she just turned sixteen and she had really just turned 13.
She is Jewish.
She lived with her grandmother as well as her parents (and is close to her grandmother).
The color of the eyeshadow she used to attract this guy is Robin's Egg Blue (the makeup is what makes her look older).
She would go to Lodi in New Jersey to visit him.
He taught her how to play guitar-- just one chord, but there was a ban/party scene where she started it out and the rest joined in with her. It might have been some meet-up in a barn or something where everyone had their cars.
She took a pregnancy test which she stole from the drugstore in the place wherever she went on vacation with her family. The test she stole was called "Quick as a Bunny!" or "Quick as a Rabbit!"
She had trouble reading the results because a positive was something like a "little bicycle wheel" of sediment or something in the bottom of the jar.
He wrote a song about her and it made it to the radio by the end of the book.

You would think I could remember the title as well as I remember these silly details. Any ideas?

posted by oflinkey to grab bag (11 comments total)

I don't specifically know the answer to your question (and I'm sure I haven't read that book) BUT I happened to have recently uploaded the NYPL's "what to do when you can't find the title of a book" standard email which might be helpful, skip the end part. I was just going to add it to my little mini-faq on my profile page.
posted by jessamyn at 4:01 PM on January 5, 2007

Sooner or Later.
posted by jrossi4r at 5:31 PM on January 5, 2007

Sounds like Sooner or Later and the sequel, Waiting Games, by Bruce and Carole Hart. I really liked those books, especially the second one.
posted by SisterHavana at 5:34 PM on January 5, 2007

I also read this book, but I don't know the title. I do know it was one of those weird books that burned itself in my memory, and I remember later coming across it online somewhere.

If it helps, I'm pretty sure a TV movie was made about it. And I think a person's name is in the title--either hers or Michael's. And I also kind of recall being surprised at the author. They'd done something else that I hadn't related back to that book.

Sorry, that's not much to go on. I'll keep searching too.
posted by faunafrailty at 5:37 PM on January 5, 2007

Sorry, I should've refreshed before posting. Sooner or Later!
posted by faunafrailty at 5:38 PM on January 5, 2007

Chocolate War is singular. I sure wish there had been more, though.
posted by bingo at 6:12 PM on January 5, 2007

THANK YOU! Awesome, that is it. Thanks jrossi4r and SisterHavana.
posted by oflinkey at 6:14 PM on January 5, 2007

Actually, bingo, "Beyond the Chocolate War" is a sequel to "Chocolate War." Not as good as the original, IMHO, but it's not a solo book.
posted by holyrood at 6:37 PM on January 5, 2007

Beyond the Chocolate War wasn't very good. The OP was referring to Sooner or Later and Waiting Games, but ther ewas actually a third book in that series, too :)
posted by polexxia at 9:07 PM on January 5, 2007

The Sooner or Later movie was this one, starring Rex Smith and Denise Miller, and the big hit single was "You Take My Breath Away," of which an excerpt can be heard here. I remember the movie was a big deal among my junior high friends. And I am pretty sure that I owned the 45 of the song.
posted by litlnemo at 4:03 AM on January 6, 2007

dang. The world as I knew it has changed shape. But I guess I won't bother reading the sequel.
posted by bingo at 1:37 PM on January 6, 2007