This is the sort of book I wish I’d had when I was 16 years old. I felt hideously abnormal: I was scared to get my driver’s license. I wanted desperately to snuggle up with my mom, but I wondered why she couldn’t just leave me alone. I spent hours each day making sure I looked pretty – practicing makeup, putting together outfits, styling my hair – but I blushed and hurried away the moment a boy glanced in my direction.

I’m a fan of McCafferty’s work in general. I don’t believe that young adult novels are particularly easy to write – they frequently seem stilted, phony, or just plain trashy (witness the Gossip Girls series, which manage to be all three at once.) McCafferty’s writing, by contrast, rings hilariously, heartbreakingly true. Her compilation of other authors’ stories follows the same trend. These women write with complete honesty about the joys, difficulties, and realities of being that hallowed age – the one we all love and hate at the same time. I know that I certainly would have loved to know I wasn’t the only one going slowly insane at that point in my life.