Not So Pure and Simple

In Green Creek, Virginia, high-school junior Del Rainey Jr. has loved Kiera Westing since kindergarten without ever telling her. When Kiera, newly single, volunteers at their church, Del follows her to the altar rail — and discovers too late that he has signed himself into the church's Purity Pledge program, formed after a rash of teen pregnancies fed rumors of a "Baby-Getters Club." Because Del is also enrolled in his school's frank sex-education class, his fellow pledgers recruit him to smuggle real answers back to them, and he agrees in hopes of finally winning Kiera. The scheme forces him to confront the reputation he did nothing to earn, the double standard that shames girls and excuses boys, and the anger of a young mother who refuses the label the town has pinned on her. It is a comedy about toxic masculinity told from inside the boy who has to unlearn it.

Author: Lamar Giles · Original publisher: HarperTeen (New York), 2020