High school senior Maude's best friend Treena is in college in the town where Maude's birth mother lived. When Maude is given a family-themed photography assignment, she decides to visit Treena and search for information about her mother.
The story is as much about Maude and Treena's friendship as it is about Maude's quest. It being a teen novel, there's also a little romance. I wonder why heterosexual YA male love interests are usually so perfect? Bennett is dreamy. Then again, there are some skanky dudes in the story, too.
I could relate to Maude's struggle to find herself and to be simultaneously sure of herself and open to experimentation, in that way of most American teens.
If you startle at the word "Boolean" in the same sentence as "Google search," know that you're reading a librarian-penned novel. Same with Maude identifying a high school space as a "media center" as well as a "library."
Though there's drinking and the suggestion of sex, this feels like a safe novel for adults to recommend to a teen, even if it's a little tepid for my own taste. I can see it being popular with the art and photography crowd.