Avalon High -- Meg Cabot

Damnit, Meg Cabot. I wish I knew how to quit you.

I swore up, down and sideways that I was going to stop reading her books. The Mediator series is over (I think), The Princess Diaries books have failed to entertain me for quite some time, and I haven't been enjoying her adult books much. Avalon High was going to be my last, and I really (really really) wasn't expecting very much. 

Come on. A re-telling of the King Arthur story? Again? But this time, in a high school? Of course I thought it was going to be lame.

Yes, yes. You win, Meg. I loved it. It was way fun. I loved the heroine:

Oh yeah. That's the other thing about having professors as parents: They name you after totally random authors—like poor Geoff, after Geoffrey Chaucer—or characters from literature, such as the Lady of Shalott, aka Lady Elaine, who killed herself because Sir Lancelot liked Queen Guinevere—you know, the one Keira Knightley played in that King Arthur movie—better than he liked her.

I don't care how beautiful the poem is about her. It's not exactly cool to be named after someone who killed herself over a guy. I have mentioned this several times to my parents, but they still don't get it.

I liked Will, too. (He's the Arthur figure—that is really, really not a spoiler, considering his girlfriend is named Jenny, his best friend's name is Lance and they're having an affair. Plus he's just... Arthur-y.) Lance was kind of a doofus, which I thought was appropriate—never been much of a Lancelot fan—and Jenny was shallow but nice. Marco (Mordred) was suitably bonkers.

Each chapter was headed by a bit from the Tennyson, so of course I kept flashing back to Anne Shirley floating down the river in her sinking boat—"Fishing. For. Lake. Trout."—which never fails to put me in a good mood.

There was a pretty awesome plot twist that I didn't see coming. Then I felt super-dumb for not seeing it coming. When I thought back, I realized that there had been lots of clues. But it was a good one.

It was really, really fun. So, yes. I'm back on the Meg train. Damnit.