THREE THINGS ABOUT DAISY BLUE (Girlfriend Fiction #20) By Kate Gordon. Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 2010.

Two girls keeping diaries. One of them making lists of three. One trip to Bali with their mothers.

Daisy Blue and Paulina Gifford are the daughters of government speechwriters. When their mothers are going to Bali for a conference, they come along. Daisy (or Zee as she prefers to be called) calls her diary Angelina and complains non-stop about everything - the probable lack of Diet Coke in Bali, having to miss her favourite TV show and, by the way, that geek Paulina. Geeky Paulina is looking forward to learning lots of stuff for school while there and trying local cuisine and, by the way, is unimpressed by Daisy, that lemon lollipop (Daisy is very thin).

As the book goes on, we learn that Zee has an eating disorder for a number of reasons and Paulina has her own reasons for her nerdy attitude to everything. Each is able to help the other. There are also the two boys - Cody the young Aussie film-maker doing a documentary in Bali, who has a lot in common with Paulina and Wayan, the gorgeous Balinese student who works part time as a waiter and is dreaming of becoming a volunteer doctor in East Timor. Will something come from this or are they just holiday romances? Are they romances at all? Read and find out.

It’s funny and genlte and easy reading, broken up into diary entries. The message bewhind it is perhaps a little too obvious, but I suspect that this won’t be as obvious to this book’s natural readers.

This series has proven very popular in my library, both among the girls who need the high-interest-low-reading-level stuff and those who just want a break from Dickens a nd Bronte and such. I’m looking forward to adding this one.

THE BOY/FRIEND By R.M. Corbet. Girlfriend Fiction 19. Sydney: Allen and Unwin 2010

Robert (R.M.) Corbet has written fiction for young adults for some time. His last Girlfriend Fiction novel, the romantic comedy Fifteen Love, was actually a re-packaged earlier novel, but this one is brand new. Like Fifteen Love, it is straight romantic comedy rather than a novel with some romance included.

Somewhere in the suburbs of Melbourne (Brunswick?) live best friends Maude and Lou (named for Louis Armstrong, in his musical family). They have lived on the same street all their lives, built a tree-house together and spent hours under the now-cut-down willow trees on the banks of the Merri Creek. Unexpectedly, Lou has asked Maude on a date. Thrown off-balance, she hasn’t taken it seriously, hurting Lou’s feelings.

What now? Does she want him after all? How does she compete with the gorgeous new member of his experimental punk rock band? Or the other female member of his band, who has extremely long legs and is an expert in setting up equipment? What does she do about the clingy Andy?

Of course, this is Girlfriend Fiction. All goes well, with the help of Lou’s sister, a rusting old BMW and a bunch of big hairy bikies.

Mr Corbet certainly enjoys writing over-the-top fiction – and who can’t remember the boy/girl friendship that changed when the boy suddenly noticed you were a girl? I still have the first gift I was given by such a boy, red-faced with embarrassment, when we were twelve…

GIRLFRIEND FICTION #17 and #18: DEAR SWOOSIE by Kate Constable and Penni Russon, THIRTEEN PEARLS By Melaina Faranda. Sydney, Allen and Unwin, 2010

Girlfriend Fiction seems to be going strong. Unlike earlier series written to appeal to a YA female audience, these are not always romances and are often humorous. Some of them are written by male authors – Barry Jonsberg, Scot Gardner and R. M. Corbet have been responsible for some of them (although Mr Corbet’s novel, Fifteen Love, a romantic comedy about music and tennis, was a re-packaged edition of a previously-published straight YA novel). Some of the novels are better than others, but the students at my school read them all and fight over who gets them next.

Dear Swoosie is a humorous novel which reminds its young readers that their parents were also teenagers once. India and Poppy, while serving a detention in the school “attic” discover a series of letters written twenty years ago by two girls who address each other as “Swoosie”, are competing for the love of a gorgeous boy and turn out to be their mothers. Said gorgeous boy is Poppy’s father. The two women have not been on speaking terms since. But Poppy’s parents have broken up and India’s father was a short-term relationship and after some argument, the girls decide to get Poppy’s father back together with India’s mother, the girl who lost the fight over him so long ago.

Meanwhile, there is a lot of misunderstanding, two irritated boyfriends, tarot cards, an annoying Principal and junior students who believe they’re both vampires.

It’s an entertaining book that girls should have a great giggle over.

The setting seems to be the Melbourne suburb of Northcote, at a school that is probably a state, rather than private, school.

As an adult who notices things kids might not, I’d like to point out that in the Victorian state school system, at least, even the Principal can’t force kids to do Saturday detentions, nor can she make them dress up as vampires, even to reassure the younger kids – especially not if she went to school with the students’ parents, who dislike her intensely. Of course, it might be a private school.

I’ll just suspend disbelief, for the sake of a highly entertaining novel – the young readers at whom it’s aimed probably won’t notice anyway and won’t care if they do; they’re better at suspending disbelief than adults are.

Thirteen Pearls takes place in the tropical far north of Queensland. Edie Sparks has been building a boat to go around the world like her teen heroes Jesse Martin and Jessica Watson. But boat-building is expensive and she needs $4000 to finish it. When her unpleasant uncle, who owns a pearl farm, asks her to come and babysit his four-year-old stepson, she agrees immediately. The job is, of course, a lot harder than she had expected and the child’s mother, a mail-order bride, is overseas for an indefinite time.

But there are two hunky boys working on the island. Will she end up with gorgeous Eurasian Kaito, heir to a pearling empire, or blonde surfer type Leon, who is saving to travel overseas to see a backpacker chick with whom he had a holiday romance?

That is, if her little cousin Aran doesn’t drive her crazy first?

This one is a standard, though well-written, teen romance. If you’ve read enough of them, you know quite soon which boy she’s going to end up with. Which is okay, because teenagers like things to be predictable in their romances.

But it has an interesting background, as does Melaina Faranda’s previous novel Big Sky – perhaps even more so, because it’s set in the part of Australia where the author lives. There is enough description to tempt the reader to drop everything and go there – and there is plenty of humour to keep you going.

Yes, the girls will like it. This one, along with Dear Swoosie, will go on the shelves at my library very soon and will probably be out on loan before one day is over.

Jacinta and the Girlfriend Fiction Book

I have always believed that anyone who says they hate reading just hasn't found the right book yet. Recently, I've been introducing such people at my school to their ideal book. Of course, it's only the start because when they finish that one, they will have to be offered "something like that one, Miss."

Just this morning, I had 8A for a double period. It was the last day of term and apart from a group research activity, with lollies and chocolates as prizes for the first group to finish correctly, I wanted them to choose something for the term break. Recently, we've told parents that some students are behind in their work and will have to do something over the break. I'm a simple soul, and a librarian first and foremost: I told mine that they could read and review something (I'm going to get them to blog it when they come back). One girl shrieked that she has more important things to do on the holidays and couldn't spare time to read (she's a good reader, but prefers sport). "Yes, you will!" said her mother and sister firmly. As it happens, she is reading something she likes anyway.

And then there's Jacinta, who loudly insisted she doesn't read, thank you very much, she hates books and would absolutely not be doing this! But one of the books I was showing the class was Lili Wilkinson's The Not Quite Perfect Boyfriend, very funny and just right for reluctant readers. Her curiosity got the better of her and she asked for it.

A minute later, she was laughing. She was reading aloud - I didn't make her do the research activity while she was on a roll. "Miss, I've read eight pages already!"

"Well done, Jacinta," I responded. "Enjoy!"

Now if only the other Girlfriend books come back from loan, including the two I have reviewed for this page but not yet put up due to the review embargo... Wait till she reads about the girl who unintentionally sets off an explosion at the school fete and whose teacher is arrested for terrorism by mistake... and the one about the romance between the music nerd and the tennis nerd ...

Stand by.

15 LOVE By R.M. Corbet, Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 2009, (Girlfriend Fiction#15). ISBN 9781742370156. A LETTER FROM LUISA By Rowena Mohr. Sydney: Alle

The Girlfriend Fiction series must be doing well, since these two bring the total so far up to sixteen books. I have read them all and put them in my library.

They’re a mixed bunch. Mostly, they are by well-known Australian young adult writers who know how to write for young people, whether it’s a serious story about issues important to teenagers or a romance that is still a bit more than the standard teen romance that was so popular in the 1980s, but was not generally well-written. These stories are mainly well-written, though some are better than others, in my opinion. And the quality is not always about the experience of the writer concerned - some of the better books were by newer writers. Interestingly, I have found that our students tend to agree with me, judging by their comments on returning the books.

I’m pleased to say that both these new books in the series are among the better titles produced so far.

15 Love is a romantic comedy about the attraction between Will, who plays tennis and looks after his younger brother, now confined to a wheelchair, and Mia, who plays the viola in the school orchestra. An unlikely pairing, you might think, except that both of them are nerdy in their ways and have never actually dated anyone, unless you count Mia going to the movies with her friend, boy-crazy Vanessa, and Vanessa’s latest, who brings his friends along for Mia and her other friend, Renata.

Will has started to wonder if there’s more to life than tennis, while Mia’s father is cheating on her mother with a woman half his age.

It takes one beagle called Harriet, a smashed viola, an arm injury and Vanessa trying to steal Will to bring the two together, while both of them have their own personal troubles to deal with.

The chapters are short, making the book easier for reluctant readers, the characters are likeable, and the story is told from both viewpoints. In some ways, it’s like the fiction of Rachel Cohn and David Levithan, without the swearing.

There have been only three male writers so far in this series and two of them have written romances. Interesting, that.

A Letter From Luisa sees the welcome return of Rowena Mohr, author of the hilarious My Life And Other Catastrophes which opened the Girlfriend series. Once again, she has produced a very funny book, though with a serious undertone to the over-the-top story. Also, she has created one of only two heroines in the entire series who isn’t a WASP. The other non-WASP protagonist was the heroine of Step Up and Dance, who was Greek. Also, the male romantic interest in Big Sky was an indigenous Australian. One issue I have had with this series, so far, is that it doesn’t really reflect the broad variety of cultures we have in Australia.

However, that isn’t a problem in this one. Luisa, whose mother was Spanish, has only one friend at school, Japanese exchange student Meko. She has been keeping house for her rather vague father and her younger sister, Nina, since her mother died three years ago. Her father had been a musician and composer, but is now creating advertising jingles for a living. Luisa, herself a gifted composer and musician, has been avoiding the guitar so as not to make him feel bad.

Now the school’s Twilight Fete is coming up and gorgeous Jet Lucas, the school’s rock star, is going to perform. Luisa is determined to impress him, even though the school’s female bully considers him her own property and is making dire threats. Luisa is trying desperately to keep a low profile to avoid being bashed up, but Jet himself has suddenly become very friendly...

At the start of the book, we know already that there has been an explosion, her teacher has been mistaken for a terrorist and Luisa has been suspended. The lead-up yo these events is very, very funny. Luisa’s problems at home and school are believable; the author just has an over-the-top way of getting them sorted out.

The book should appeal equally to those girls who want a straight romance, those who want mainstream fiction and those who like a funny story.