Melody Carlson

The 7th grade girls Looooooove problem novels. They especially want drugs! Abuse! Makes for much cheery reading. However, most books of this sort are more than disturbing, which is why I went ahead and ordered several of the "Color Me" series by Melody Carlson without reading them. She is a Christian author, which can get really annoying. Color Me Silver was not too bad, but Faded Denim sent the quasi-anorexic main character to a church camp and it got preachy and boring. Haven't worked my way through the other ones, though. On the plus side, she lists resources for help at the back, and there are no objectionable scenes-- well, no gratuitous nudity or swearing.

Speaking of just plain gratuitous, I finished Peyton's Darkling last night, which was a prefectly serviceable story about a girl from an impoverished family who gets a horse and manages to race it, and buried deep in the middle she has a semigraphic fling with the neighbor boy! Not bad enough to remove, but rather a shock.