The Cure for Crushes (and Other Deadly Plagues)

Dave Jenkinson is a professor in the Faculty of Education at the University of Manitoba and the author of the “Portraits” section of Emergency Librarian.

Readers first met 16-year-old Haley Andromeda Harmony in The Healing
Time of Hickeys, as she entered her graduating year at Sacred Heart
High. It was supposed to be TGYML (The Greatest Year of My Life), but
kept threatening to turn into TMHYML (The Most Humiliating Year of My
Life). Again, through laptop diary entries, Haley humorously and
egocentrically shares what happened to her.

Each of the January through June entries is labelled with the day,
date, and time, and begins with Haley’s self-assessment of the state
of her mood, hair, and health; her horoscope; and the number of JT
sightings—the last of which is supposedly no longer important because
JT, the object of Haley’s crush in Hickeys, has been “stolen” by
the beautiful Jules, one of her two best friends. Haley’s other friend
is the athletic, bright, Harvard-bound Kiki. Comparing herself to Jules
and Kiki, Haley feels inadequate, especially as she struggles with the
academic, athletic, and social aspects of her life. She wonders if Brad,
her new boyfriend, might not be the cure for the crushes she continues
to have on so many of the males she encounters.

Pleased that her hippie father has found a job, Haley is initially
unhappy about his acquiring a live-in girlfriend three decades his
junior. The list-producing Haley, a budding hypochondriac, also
amusingly continues to self-diagnose after consulting medical websites.
A fun, light, albeit somewhat long read, Crushes concludes with an
epilogue suggesting readers may not have seen the last of Haley.
Recommended.