Raven’s Range
Blather around a virtual range

I picked this up at the thrift store with a view to releasing it, but decided to see what all the fuss was about. It’s chick lit, and young adult chick lit at that, and at least for the first fifty or so pages I couldn’t see why the fuss.

This is the story of four close friends spending a summer apart for the first time in their lives, and I couldn’t see how this would be interesting.

But, despite myself, I found myself warming to both the story and the plot. Carmen finds a pair of jeans in a thrift store, forgets about them, and then one of the others spots it as they are about to part. They all try the jeans on–and to their amazement, the pair fits each of them perfectly and flatteringly. Since they are all very different, they decide that the pants must be magic and that they will be sent from girl to girl over the course of the summer.

But the pants have a different effect from what they are expecting. Each girl gets into some kind of trouble while wearing them, trouble that changes them forever. Only when the pants are passed on do they find a way to sort out the trouble…the pants’ magic, it seems, is not in what it can do for the girls, but what it can do for their growing maturity and sense of honesty.

Each short chapter is interwoven with letters from the other girls, creating a continuity that is both sweet and apt. Each of them changes in some way, heading towards adulthood one painful step at a time. Whether it’s finding a muse, a lover, too much of a lover or the courage to tell an absent father what they feel, each girl grows stronger that summer and a little more wise.

In the end, I found myself caring, and I was very glad to see that there are three sequels, one of them fresh and still only in hardback. I’ll be seeking out those sequels as soon as I can.

It’s too bad the publisher decided to stick an image from the movie on the book, though. The one I have is the original, which matches the other three, and is much cuter.

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