I found this book entertaining, but boring all at the same time. As the first book of the 'Alice' series, Phyllis Reynolds Naylor talks about a girl who has lost her biological mother at an early age, and is living with her new step-mom and her father. Her father signs her up for a sex ed class at the local church, and Alice isn't very happy. She's frantic and furious, because she feels as though she can't trust her dad anymore because he made a decision that SHE should of made herself. She also thinks that her dad signing her up for a class like that at a church means that something happened with her older brother for her dad to not want to trust her.

She goes to every class at the church, and she actually enjoys it because they play interesting and fun games, including "guess what i am" which they had to go around wearing a piece of paper with a sexual term on it that they had to indentify by asking each other questions that would help them in the process of doing so.

Alice has to work on a project with an old friend, Sam. While they are working on their project outside of school, Sam takes Alice to a movie. They start dating, but Alice isn't really into the relationship as much as Sam is. You can tell by the way Alice tells the story that Sam really cares about her, but Alice doesn't feel the same way because Sam is too clingy. When Alice's school plans a trip to New York, she promises her friends Gwen, Pamela, and Liz that she'll be able to hang out with them AND Sam when they are there in New York.

Alice's friend Pamela is having family problems; her mother started cheating on her father and unexpectedly left Pamela for two years. She comes back to the house one night, hoping to reunite with Pamela- but, no such luck. She's kicked out of the house by Pamela's father and isn't seen or heard from until she signs up to be a chaperone for the New York trip. Pamela is furious that her mother would ever chaperone, considering she doesn't show much love towards her mom; and that her mom should be getting the hint by now.

During the New York trip, Alice and her friends escape the hotel room and hang out with other guys from school in a bar, and drink alcohol by asking older people to buy it for them. On the last day of the trip, Pamela finds out that her mother has been taking anti-anxiety pills because of the stress she's been under lately and decides to plan to do something with her every month so they can bond more often.

When they get back from New York, Sam finds out about Alice's trip out of her hotel room that night and gets really upset because she was hanging out with other guys, and he wasn't included. In the book, it says,
'"I'm disappointed in you, Alice," Sam said, and walked away. Disappointed? "He's disappointed in me?" I croaked. "What am I? Five years old? We burst out laughing. We couldn't help it."' After this, Alice completely ignores Sam and doesn't even go over to see what's bothering him. I think that's pretty low of Alice, and that maybe Sam IS a little too clingy and overprotective at times, but if she doesn't like him in a boyfriend-girlfriend sort of way, then why date him?

Although Sam and Alice resolves their problem about the New York trip incident, Alice breaks up with Sam shortly after because of his clingyness.

In the conversation, where Alice breaks up with Sam, she starts by telling him that he's too nice and that he's always around her. When Alice spills her guts to Sam, he says that he wants a life with her and that he really cares for her and loves her- and that's not what Alice was hoping to hear, considering she wasn't exactly as serious about their relationship as he was. So, she breaks up with him and he becomes heartbroken, but he gets over it and they become somewhat friends; or aquaintances.

I find it hard to believe that Alice would stay in a relationship that she doesn't even want to be in longer than she should, and break someone's heart, because SHE knows how a broken heart feels; because of when Patrick decided to date Penny, the girl that Alice hated, instead of staying with her. I believe Alice is kind of stupid to even go out with Sam as long as she did, and I wish she would've dumped him sooner than she had so his heart wouldn't be as broken as it was.

At times, I wish this book wasn't so involved in sex, but I guess it's pretty accurate because we go through those types of things around Alice's age. I've stopped reading this series because I get really bored easily, especially with books that talk about the same people all of the time. Although I did enjoy this book at some parts, Alice is a little too anxious and weird about things sometimes, and it just really bothers me- I can't exactly find the words to explain it correctly. If I were going to rate this book accurately, I would give it 3 or 3 1/2 stars. I might recommend this book to a few people, but I can say that I did not enjoy this book as much as the first one. ( )