Readers will find more than boy-crazy teens in ‘Boyfriend Season: Cali Boys’

You always know who your friends are.

They're the ones who help you look your best, and they're honest if your new 'do makes you look bad. Your friends help you with homework, they support your dreams and they forever hold your secrets without spilling.

You always know who your friends are.

At least, you hope you do.

Jacobi Swanson wished there was a good way to be sure. In the new book "Boyfriend Season: Cali Boys" by Kelli London, she needed to know who her friends were before she made a very big mistake.

There were a lot of things Jacobi wanted.

She wanted to start developing in the chest area because, after all, she was 15 years old! She wanted to be inspired because her dad just got her an awesome new videocamera. She wanted to keep playing the stock market. And she wanted to move back to her old neighborhood, where she'd left her two best friends, Scooby and Katydid.

Now she'd never know if Scooby liked her the way she liked him. And in the meantime, Jacobi was stuck in a one-bathroom house with two dorky brothers. Hunter was a pain, but Diggs was worse.

Kassidy Maddox was new to the neighborhood, too, and she hated it as well. This suburb of Los Angeles was nothing like New York City, and NYC was where she belonged. Her modeling career was there and so was her boyfriend but noooo, her mother eloped with some LA dude and now Kassidy was living with Mom, Step-Daddy-Dearest and a nasty, overweight, overeating step-sister who didn't know one thing about fashion.

At least Kassidy had her new friend, Faith. Maybe Faith could make a girl feel at home, and the Cali boys were interesting, too. Kassidy didn't think they were as fine as the guy she left in New York, but they were a nice diversion.

Alissa had lived in the neighborhood for most of her life and once she met Jacobi, she knew it'd be great to have a friend her age next door. When you're 15 years old, being the only girl in a family is not a lot of fun, even when your brothers are both nothing but girl-magnets.

Judging by its title, you couldn't be blamed for thinking that "Boyfriend Season: Cali Boys" is, well, nothing but boy-craziness. Read a few pages, though, and you'll see that's not the case.

While it's true that the characters here have their sights set on romance, Jacobi and Kassidy both have full lives, interests and dreams without boys in them. Like all YA novels by London, the teens in this book are cute, they're smart, they do fun things and the boyfriends they eventually have are nice guys.

Parental bonus: no profanity. What's not to like?

For 12- to 17-year-old girls, the answer to that question is "Nothing," because this book is that good. "Boyfriend Season: Cali Boys" is, in fact, something you'll want to share with your friends.

You know who they are.

View publishes Terri Schlichenmeyer's children's book reviews weekly.