In the hands of Louise Rennison (the Georgia Nicolson series), a summer camp for high school drama queens on the bluffs of Yorkshire becomes the stuff of high comedy. The title suggests a send-up of the Brontë Sisters, and readers will not be disappointed. Tallulah Casey, Georgia's cousin, shares some of the family knack for wit. Early on in the novel, Tallulah, who narrates and is in the midst of reading Jane Eyre, notices that the drama school's Dother Hall is on fire, and a figure resembling Mrs. Rochester is on the roof. She tells a fellow camper, "It all adds up, doesn't it? We're in Yorkshire on some moors at a big house, the roof's on fire, and someone, who may or may not have been banged up in the attic for years, has just come out onto the roof. I'm only stating the obvious."
Although Dother Hall accepts only girls, Woolfe Academy for Young Men is but a stone's throw away. Tallulah quickly endears herself to the other campers by summing up their collective experiences with boys: "Is that it then? A maybe fondling of a bum, a hit-and-run undone thing, and an ice cube incident?" Tallulah rents what she calls a "squirrel room" from the kind-hearted, slightly out of touch Dobbins family, who provide further fodder for Rennison's comedy. And fascinating bad boy Cain, who sings in a rock band, seems to turn up under Tallulah's window "snogging" with a different girl each night. Will Tallulah be one of them? It all adds up, doesn't it? --Jennifer M. Brown, children's editor, Shelf Awareness