CW: Sexual content ( )

LGBTQ teen fic/light romance for mature teens (gay love pentagon?); main characters are 11th graders in smallish Ohio college town (contains sex, drinking, marijuana use, Wicca). I only like this book for its LGBTQA diversity, otherwise it was just OK. I would probably like it more if I were more into light teen romances (or if it had more action/adventure?). ( )

High school senior Sam has two close friends, Landon who was his boyfriend until two years ago and Meg who is in love with that jerk Michael. He feels the lack of a boyfriend and Wiccan Meg offers to do a spell to help. And in a sweet but heartbreaking way he does get his wish answered but there are complications. It's decently written,not overpoweringly coy, and moves pretty well, though the emotional load might have been better distributed. But mostly, not my thing. Teenagers, yetch. Wise teenagers - or at least significantly wiser teenagers. And yes, there are winks. ( )

When I was a senior in high school, I was that girl in the black Rocky Horror t-shirt listening to indie music, smoking clove cigarettes and reading Jack Kerouac and the existentialists. I made trips to Enchantments in the East Village to get my witchery supplies and had “Bell Book & Candle” queued up in the VCR on repeat. Naturally, when I saw that the protagonist’s BFF in L. Phillips Perfect Ten is the school’s resident Wiccan spellcaster, I was all in.

It’s been a couple of years since Sam broke it off with his first boyfriend Landon and, while they remain good friends, Sam has not moved on. It’s not for lack of desire, but lack of opportunity. When Meg, the aforementioned WBF (aka Wiccan Best Friend) offers to cast a love spell to attract the perfect man, he reluctantly agrees. Before you know it, he has three talented and attractive guys vying for his affections – Gus, a suave French exchange student, Travis, a randy bisexual rock musician and Jamie, a shy and sensitive painter. Oh, and did I mention? Landon might just want him back.

This is a cute story, but while I was reading it I kept asking myself for whom this story was intended. In a lot of ways, it reads like slash-fiction, which is mostly written by females for a mostly female audience. And, typical of a YA novel, on the very first page smoking is vilified and yet, a mere eight pages later the author treats Sam and Landon’s pot smoking as if it’s no big deal. The same goes for [the copious amounts of] underage drinking. Most telling though is Sam’s completely unrealistic attitude toward sex. He believes the intense emotions that accompanied having sex with Landon at 15 is what destroyed their relationship so he’s determined to abstain from taking things too far with Gus, Travis and/or Jamie. That’s all well and good (this is intended for young readers, after all) but it’s a bit difficult to believe that he’d have the fortitude to extract himself from several of the situations he gets into (particularly with Travis). And strangely, the author avoids dealing with the most obvious result of two half-clothed boys in bed together groping each other and making out, as Sam has utterly no issues with calling a halt to the proceedings. Neither young man seems to suffer the desperation, discomfort or embarrassment that would surely occur in the real world (if you get my drift). Based on its coyness about sex, and despite the drug use and drinking, this book seems aimed squarely at a middle school readership, not high schoolers. Under any other circumstances I’d never recommend Mark Kendrick's Desert Sons (surely the most poorly written book I’ve ever read), however it does offer a much better representation of how real teenage boys behave with respect to sex. Not at all surprising, since it was written by a man.

Overall, I enjoyed this story. It has sweet and appealing characters plus one or two unexpected surprises that kept me guessing up until nearly the end. While romance novels are not my typical fare, they can offer a pleasant vacation from more challenging and/or depressing novels with their guaranteed HEA (Happily Ever After). In that regard, Perfect Ten certainly does not disappoint. ( )

The world needs more books like this—a teen romance about a boy looking for a boyfriend that is not a coming-out story or a bullying story or a story where Sam's gayness is any big deal at all, but just a swoony summer read for anyone who's made wrong turns along the road to love. ( )