Doesn't that hit right on the nose?
This is probably the GOAT of all YA novels... the one where the protagonist, Katherine, loses her virginity to her first serious boyfriend, Michael, only to drift apart at the end.
No one dies (edit: I forgot about grandpa!), although we do have the complexity of Arnie's depression.
Katherine does not suffer the devastating consequences that were threatened to all of us terrified Catholic school girls if we were to fall from grace by having premarital sex.
As a matter of fact, Katherine and Michael grow together and establish a healthy and intimate sex life. What's more, the pacing of Blume's book is such that the two develop a real relationship from their first encounter at a friend's house on New Year's Day until their breakup in August, just before they leave for their freshman year at college.
I resembled THAT in 1989. I've said this about one or two of my former relationships: just because it didn't last doesn't mean it wasn't real.
This book is on all sorts of banned book lists for everything from the sex to the casual drug use (they smoke some weed), the language, the suicidal ideation, and probably the fact that Katherine doesn't end up destitute and paying dearly for her actions.
We loved it.
So scandalous was the content that the girls in my grade got their copies smuggled to them from their older sisters. If someone didn't have an older sister, someone passed the book in secret, right under Sister Gloria's nose.
