"Achingly Alice" by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor

128 pages

Alice has a lot going on. Her mom died when she was four, so she's growing up with her dad and 21-year-old brother. She's 14 now and has been with her boyfriend, Patrick, for about two years, but lately she can't stop thinking about other guys. Then Mr. Sorringer, her school's vice-principal, returns to work after a year on the West Coast. The problem with this is that he is in love with Miss Summers, who has been dating Alice's dad. Alice can tell that Miss Summers is torn between Mr. Sorringer and her dad, which drives her crazy because she is dying for Miss Summers to marry her dad and become her stepmom. She decides to do something about it, but of course things don't go the way she planned.

As I mentioned in my review of "Alice in April," an earlier book in this series, I love the characters in these books, particularly Alice's family. This book provides good doses of both humor and tough stuff, as do the rest of the Alice books that I've read. I didn't think this one was quite as funny as "Alice in April," though, and it seemed sort of repetitive: Alice still wants Miss Summers and her dad to get together and they still are moving too slowly for her. I would have liked to see more new stuff coming into play in "Achingly Alice."