THERE ARE MOMENTS IN ADOLESCENCE THAT ARE THE WORST TIMES OF YOUR LIFE

convincing portrayal of her character.

Mill Valley’s students more-or-less embody the playground pecking order set out in the brief middle school stratum that is the book’s introduction. Roll call en femme: athlete, ingénue, queen bee and, somehow worst of the lot, a lonely girl who finds herself fitting no archetype at all. Johnson’s boys are a requisite spread of jock, stoner and outcast, rounded out with their own labelless drifter: in both groups it’s the anonymous who suffer most dearly from their lack of easy classification. Johnson is comprehensive in assembling this cast, each a detailed and deliberate portrait of Your School’s cafeteria. I’m envious of whatever firsthand research she did to compile the kids these days – one character sweating through his split-finger fastball reads as authentically as the dude rolling a doob – but the mystery that occupies a classroom caste system’s in-between bits is part of what makes it so compelling, and that nuance is absent in Johnson’s almost-too-thorough locker room litany.

The urgency promised in the book’s jacket isn’t quite realized in its pages. This is, in part, a consequence of Johnson’s stylistic choice. Though each character holds up interest in isolation (high praise from this antsy reader who, sorry George R.R. Martin, routinely skipped Loras Tyrrell) toggling between their perspectives does flag the pace. Such rounded views don’t sustain much interest when the page finally turns, especially when the novel’s climactic elements have already been recounted by its earlier voices. Johnson’s book is billed for big kids – an adult’s little looksee-poo into the secret life of American teenagers – but built without momentum, it’s hard to see The Most Dangerous Place on Earth trumping whatever grown-up obligations beckon one room over. Teenage readers might find more tension seeking out their own experience mirrored in one of Johnson’s characters-to-come.

The Most Dangerous Place on Earth is an ambitious debut, and though puttering too much with perspective has hurt this book’s overall readability, Johnson is wise in making Molly Nicoll its backbone. The novel’s most compelling character, Molly is tender testament to the way teenage hurt can’t help lingering for life. She, like Betty Cooper, is just one more broken promise: that the swells of self-doubt and sadness once hung on high school’s heightened hormones don’t always blow over when its last blemishes do.