cover image Virgin

Virgin

Radhika Sanghani. Berkley, $16 trade paper (304p) ISBN 978-0-425-27631-0

Bridget Jones and Carrie Bradshaw, meet your wisecracking, vagina-obsessed match. Sanghani’s debut is a hilarious, irreverent look at smart-alecky, painfully self-conscious, 21-year-old Ellie’s relentless mission to rectify a disastrous first attempt at performing oral sex, get deflowered, find the perfect Brazilian wax, avoid her tradition-bound Greek mother’s nagging, graduate summa cum laude, be a writer, and fit in. She is joined in her booze-fueled misadventures by family friend Paul, newly uncloseted and a fellow virgin, and BFFs Lara, who makes Ellie confront uncomfortable truths about herself, and Emma, Ellie’s cowriter for an advice vlog for other women stumbling along the “path of sexual activity.” “Whatever you’ve felt? We’ve felt worse,” the vloggers promise. Ellie will get it all ridiculously wrong before, predictably, she gets it just right. “I only accepted my virginity after I lost it,” Ellie advises her vlogging audience. “Embrace the STDs... along with the regrets, the disastrous stories, the heartbreak, the pain and the regret.” This story for millennials is a wonderful blend of modern angst with old-fashioned sweetness. (Aug.)