A teen-ager stumbles through new experience

Tom Clagett | For The New Mexican

3/16/2008 - 1/19/08

Hot Scots, Castles, and Kilts

By Tammy Swoish

Delacorte Press Books for Young Readers

201 pages, $7.99

The sweet, engaging pleasure of Tammy Swoish's debut novel for young readers comes through the genuinely funny and charming observations presented in the journal-style entries of 16-year-old Sami Ames.

Sami and her mother, a romance novelist, fly to Scotland to help their cousins save MacKensie Manor. Molly MacKensie and her feisty teenage daughter Fiona plan to turn their ancestral home into a working farm for tourists. Sami cannot fathom going to a farm for a vacation. "I should be at the beach checking out guys," she says, then wonders, "When will Mom let me grow up?"

Her impatience sounds pitch-perfect, very teenaged, and does make for a treat-filled read (even if your teen years are long behind you, like mine). It's also a relief that Swoish's Sami isn't a smart aleck, attitude-laden, cell-phone-grafted-to-her-ear brat.

The less than luxurious accommodations of the stone cottage of her ancestors' home provoke Sami's early anxiety: cooking over an open fire, straw-filled mattresses, no electricity, no running water, no Internet. "We need modern conveniences. Help!" she writes.

Sami gamely participates in making soap, milking cows and dyeing wool (that one results in a big yellow stain on her face). She can't quite figure out her cousin Fiona, who obsesses over an ancient family feud with the neighboring McClintoggs. "Fiona needs therapy, or a manicure, or something," Sami observes. And there's a pesky ghost haunting her bedroom who insists on talking to her. Not the picture-perfect vacation she hoped for.

Then she gets her first look at young Adan McClintogg. "Gorgeousness radiated off him so strongly I could smell it. Then I sneezed ... was I allergic to him?" She later says, "He smelled like outside — how dorky a thought is that?" This screwball coming-of-age comic commentary has a delightful ring.

Sami's teenage tingling over this "hot Scot" turns to that "weird, happy, I-want-to-throw-up feeling a guy gives you," a feeling her mom calls "special."

The sequence when Sami eats in front of Adan made me laugh out loud. "There's nothing more disturbing than having a guy make eye contact when you know there's a hunk of ham hanging out of the corner of your mouth." Her insecurity increases with "Every swallow sounded like I was trying to force down a boulder of meat." (Funny how teenage worries can follow into adulthood.)

Swoish succeeds in finding just the right balance throughout for a young girl experiencing the tribulations of teen life, from the horror of pimples, to first dates, to existing without hair conditioner, to learning that life isn't always about what you want.

Clagett is a Santa Fe writer.