Senior year is fraught with drama and much of it stems from making a decision about one's future. As December early decision announcements approach, students who applied are anxiously awaiting answers from their college of choice. Others are second guessing their decisions or still struggling with applications that will soon be due. Parents' expectations and dreams also play into the anxieties students experience. Three new young adult novels explore some of the issues students face in this dog-eat-dog world of competing for available college space. Julie Buxbaum's Admission focuses on what parents will do to advance their children's opportunities. Ben Phillipe's Charming as a Verb examines a young man's temptations in trying to get an advantage in being accepted by his "reach" school. In Rachel Lynn Solomon's Today, Tonight, Tomorrow, two students who have been rivals throughout high school compete for one last accolade.
The college admission scandal that rocked the country is the subject of Buxbaum's latest novel Admission. Chloe Wynn Berringer, daughter of a Hollywood celebrity, has been accepted at the college of her dreams, even though she's pretty sure she doesn't qualify. Then the FBI comes to arrest her mother for tampering with the admissions process and the nightmare begins. Will Chloe be arrested as well? What did she know and when did she know it? Is she complicit in her mother's crime? As Lori Loughlin and Felicity Huffman head off to prison as the result of an investigation known as Operation Varsity Blues, it is interesting to read a similar fictional story told from the student's point of view. Not wanting to disappoint her mother, Chloe willing participates in some questionable activities in the quest to get into the college of her mother's dreams. Is she guilty as well?
In Charming as a Verb a student once again struggles to please a parent. Henri Haltiwanger, a charismatic first-generation Haitian American teen, has a dog-walking business that is self-run, even though he pretends to be working for "Uptown Updogs." When Corinne, an awkward high-achieving African American classmate and client, discovers his secret, he agrees to help her socially in exchange for her discretion. As they spend time together, an attraction grows. Henri, who aspires to go to Columbia to please his father, secretly hopes Corinne's mother, a dean at Columbia, will help him get in. Henri will do anything to achieve his father's dream, even though he's beginning to think it's not right for him. He steps over the line, taking a risk that may cost him everything, including the girl he's fallen for.
Today, Tonight, Tomorrow introduces Rowan Roth and Neil McNair, who have been overachieving rivals throughout high school. Rowan frequently loses out to Neil and she thinks she can't wait to go to college and get away from him. When he is named valedictorian, she figures she has only one more opportunity to best him. She is determined to win "Howl," a scavenger hunt for the senior class that takes the students all over Seattle. When Rowan and Neil find out a group of seniors is out to defeat them, they team up so that they will be the last two players in the competition. But as they cooperate to solve the clues, Rowan finds out she and Neil have a lot in common and he might just have a place in her future. Will it change her decision about where she goes to college? As she begins second guessing her choices and weighing the pros and cons of the schools that have accepted her, Neil becomes a factor she never expected to consider.
