Ok. I'm a bit of a sucker for girl coming of age books. I can't explain why, I just have always loved them.
This book is four coming of age stories wrapped in a story of friendship.
Bridget, Lena, Carmen, and Tibby are best friends. They have been best friends since they were born. They normally spend every summer together, but this year, their fifteenth year, they are all going their separate ways for a couple of months. They stay connected by a magical pair of jeans that somehow fit all four of them, even though they are built very differently.
Carmen goes to visit her father. She assumes that it will be the two of them having fun and connecting. But she is surprised when she arrives and discovers that not only will it not be the two of them, but that her father is getting married and now has two stepchildren. She hates the new family, but she is mostly mad and disappointed that her father didn't warn her.
Bridget is in Baja California for soccer camp. She is the headstrong one of the group. She is the girl who gets a goal and doesn't stop until she reaches it. Her goal for this camp is to seduce the 19 year old male coach of another team. She is brazen and reckless.
Lena heads to Greece with her younger sister to visit their grandparents. While there, Lena's grandmother tries to set her up with the grandson of her friends and neighbors. Lena tries to find a way to turn away Kostos, and then an unfortunate incident happens, creating a rift between the two grandfathers who have been friends for decades.
Poor Tibby is left alone. She doesn't go anywhere and gets a job at the local pharmacy, Wallman's. She meets Bailey, who, while three years younger, will turn Tibby's world upside down. Bailey has leukemia and she manages to show Tibby that her life isn't as bad as she had previously thought it was and opens her eyes to the world outside her "miserable" life.
The pants go to each girl, and the first time around, they each fail to really do anything profound while wearing their magic Pants. But when each girl gets the Pants for a second time during the summer, they learn something about their lives and find a way to, essentially, the moral of their summer.
I loved that these girls grew and changed over their summer. They were each prejudiced about who they were and what they were doing, but all four girls learned valuable lessons that helped to make them into better people.
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