On the Road

Doyon's (It Had to Be You) On the Road quartet rolls out with this middling caper introducing 18-year-old Miranda Burke from Greenwich, Conn., who passes up a chance to attend Yale (alma mater of both parents) to travel across the country with Kirsten, a free-spirited acquaintance. ""Doubts are munching at my insides, telling me not to go through with it,"" thinks Miranda as her parents, finally resigned to their daughter's uncharacteristically radical plan, drive her to New York City, where she hooks up with Kirsten. The author sets up readers for these unlikely traveling companions' adventures, but they never really go anywhere. Miranda, the narrator, spends nearly half the novel roaming the city as Kirsten packs up her apartment. When the pair finally depart, their first and last stop together is the inn Kirsten's mother owns on the Jersey shore. They plan to borrow the woman's car and hit the road, yet days pass as Kirsten mends fences with her parent, whom she hasn't seen in a year. When the girl announces that she is going to stay there rather than travel with her friend, Miranda must decide whether to continue alone or return home. Doyon's story features credible characters and the promise of future travels (Miranda is off to visit her Yalie brother at the close) but is short on action. Ages 12-up. (May)