Girls in Pants

**Book 1 * Book 2**

Something about this series is addicting to me. I find myself being sucked in each time I read it, and it seems to just speed by. But that's how I feel about books when I really like them: they just go too fast.

This is the summer before the girls go off for their freshman years in college. They're splitting up, not just for the summer, but for the year. It's going to be strange for them and they are all confused about how their friendship will endure that.

Lena is struggling with her family. She plans to go to art school, but her father suddenly tells her she can't after he discovers her taking a class that includes a nude model. He refuses to pay and if he won't pay, she won't go. But her art teacher talks her into creating a portfolio to apply for a scholarship to the school. She gets the scholarship and it won't matter if her father wants her to go or not. But their family is already dealing with some difficulties since Valia, Lena's grandmother moved into their house from Greece.

Carmen is planning to go to the same college her father went to, and her grades are so good that she's accepted to this small college. But she learns that her mother and her new stepfather are expecting a baby around the time that she's supposed to leave and it's like Carmen's world turns upside down. Carmen, the nearly 18 year old, is afraid that this new baby will replace her when she goes away to college and that her mother will forget about her, so she makes plans to not go away to college and instead go to one locally and stay in the apartment with her mother, stepfather, and the new baby. But Carmen also meets a new boy while she's caring for Lena's grandmother Valia for the summer.

Tibby is headed to NYU to work on a degree in film. But her summer becomes a wreck when she starts ignoring Brian, the boy she's close friends with, and her three year old sister falls out of Tibby's window trying to reach the apple tree in the backyard. Tibby is wracked with guilt that her sister's fall is her fault since she never opens that window and the one time she does, the three year old falls out.With her sister's accident, Tibby starts questioning everything she thought she knew.

Bridget has a bigger struggle. She spends the summer coaching soccer at a soccer camp. But one of the other coaches is none other than Eric who she had a fling with in the first book. She imagines that the whole summer will be confusing and disastrous because of what happened the end of their first summer together. But Eric has a girlfriend, so Bridget decides that they'll just be friends, and over the course of the summer they become friends.

The girls grow together and they grow in their own ways. But, as usual, they grow.