Miracle Girls #4

Gr 9 Up—This conclusion to the series offers Riley's perspective on the main characters' senior year of high school. The authors do a skillful job of filling in the backstory, so readers are up to speed on why Riley, Zoe, Ana, and Christine are so important to one another. (Each teen miraculously survived a life-threatening event.) Riley is the one who has it all: she's beautiful and breezes through AP courses, has many friends, and could get into any college, including Harvard. However, she is not sure where she wants to go, and she doesn't want to apply to a school that is someone else's dream for her. Her second problem: her younger brother struggles with Asperger's syndrome and is having a difficult time fitting in at high school. Riley cannot always protect him from cruel classmates, or even from himself. Problem number three: how to handle hypocritical Christians especially in light of the fact that she is struggling with her own faith. The Miracle Girls are dynamic characters, and the authors offer a realistic depiction of teen issues. This series could be seen as the Christian teen's answer to Ann Brashares's "The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants" (Delacorte).—Wendy Smith-D'Arezzo, Loyola College, Baltimore, MD