Pretty Little Dirty is a bold, coming-of-age story that follows the entwined lives of Lisa and Celeste from their pre-teen years to college. While at times gritty and dark, the underlying friendship and affection between the girls remains strong and realistic as they confront school, peer pressure, distant parents, boy-girl relationships, and growing up.

Lisa Smith is the narrator, recounting the tales of her youth with immediacy and a fresh voice. Celeste, her best friend since they were eleven, is slightly prettier, brighter, and has a seemingly normal family, all things that Lisa envies and manages to access when Celeste's parents, in essence, become her foster parents.

The awkwardness of the teenage years comes through in a painfully realistic manner as readers follow the two girls through their daily activities, which include learning jazz dancing and gourmet cooking, as well as their academic studies. Their social development is traced through the requisite milestones of summer camp, the first co-ed party, and homecoming.

As the girls grow up, they start pushing beyond their boundaries, successfully entering womanhood through a variety of sexual liaisons, while somehow maintaining an outward appearance of mid-west normality. Lisa and Celeste continue their dangerous behavior until the final denouement, which is both unexpected and believable.

Pretty Little Dirty is full of strong writing - descriptive images, a distinctive narrator's voice, and plot arc that follows this friendship to the end. However, the emphasis on sex and outrageous behavior runs almost out of control in some sections of the novel, where some judicious editing would reduce these events while keeping the shock value. Also, the novel's chapters are interspersed with second person sections that seemingly have little relevance to the novel's plot, and serve more to interrupt the novel's flow than provide additional content.

Ultimately, Boyden's debut moves forward with a strong authoritative voice; presents three-dimensional, realistic characters, both major and minor; and creates believable situations and plot points to surround the protagonists. By the novel's end, Lisa and Celeste's evolutions both exhaust and entrance, but provide the perfect capstone to the story.

Cara Seitchek chats with the author.