In the acknowledgments the author wrote that this book was about the friends and family that hold us together, uncertainty, learning to accept love and support and how scary and hard a skill that can be to learn (I like the notion of learning to accept love and support as a skill), and about doing hard things un-alone. I suppose that is as good as explanation as any.
The story begins with a dead boy and his exploded penis. Alexis was trying to lose her virginity with Josh Harper when she inadvertently caused his penis to explode with her magic. Yes, magic. Alexis and her five best friends can all do magic. Each has a particular gift. Alexis can communicate with animals. She doesn't talk to them in words exactly, but understands them and they understand her. One of the other girls can do something similar with plant life, especially trees. Another can heal. They don't know where their magic came from or why they can do it. They just can. They're still experimenting and learning what they can do. They don't know the extent of their powers. Josh's spontaneous explosion is as much as a surprise to Alexis as it no doubt was to Josh. She had no idea she could do something like that.
Alexis calls her friends for help. Together the six of them try to figure out how to fix, or failing that, how to deal with the situation. Being seniors in high school, Josh is only one of many things they have to deal with. There is college to think about, family members to contend with, and unarticulated feelings to express.
I enjoyed reading about the deep friendship among the six girls but there was a slight disconnect. The death of a person is a big deal and yet Josh doesn't matter much even though the actions of the girls revolve around concealing his death. His death was merely a way into the story. Little is revealed about Josh or the way the magic in this story works and why these six random girls can do magic. I want to think the magic was a metaphor for the power girls and women have but don't always realize they have. Alas, that is just a guess.
