Author’s observations ever insightful in ‘Charmed’

“Charmed Thirds”

by Megan McCafferty (Crown, 368 pages, $21)

Megan McCafferty is famous these days, but not for the right reasons.

Harvard student Kaavya Viswanathan has admitted to plagiarizing from McCafferty’s first two novels in her own book about a teenage girl in New Jersey who suffers through high school, loves the wrong boy and dreams of attending an Ivy League university.

I suppose if you’re compelled to steal another writer’s work, you may as well scavenge from the best, and McCafferty is one of the sharpest, funniest, most refreshingly candid writers working in the coming-of-age genre.

What she should be known for is not someone else’s lack of imagination but her hilarious Jessica Darling novels – “Sloppy Firsts,” “Second Helpings” and now “Charmed Thirds” – which may be about a young woman’s amusing and rocky journey to adulthood, but are smart and accomplished enough to delight readers of any age.

In “Charmed Thirds,” Jessica has left behind her hated hometown of Pineville – sort of – for her dream destination of Columbia University, despite the fact that her parents can’t or won’t help her financially.

Her relationship with the reformed but ever-mysterious Marcus Flutie continues despite the fact he attends Gakkai College in California, “an unaccredited Buddhist school at which it is possible to major in Chanting and Purification.”

Distance from Marcus, literal and emotional, sends Jessica’s moods careening from jubilant (“reunion sex rocks”) to pathetic (obsessive Google stalking).

But “Charmed Thirds” isn’t just about a teen romance trying to find its adult legs. McCafferty gives herself plenty of room to insightfully chart three eventful years in Jess’ life, during which she works at the magazine internship from hell; makes new and dysfunctional friends to take the place of longtime BFF Hope; and is attracted to a married foreign man, a faux sensitive emo boy and, most frightening of all, a cocky young Republican.

Jessica must also cope with her changing relationships with her mother and sister and recover from the most horrific experience of her life: “There is only one thing worse than walking in on two people having sex. Walking in on two people having sex and having those people be YOUR PARENTS.”

The humor in “Charmed Thirds” is cheerfully blue – Jessica may be formidably intelligent, but her observations frequently concern sex. She’s an original, but her problems are universal, and McCafferty is formidably adept at channeling her self-deprecating, wise-guy voice.

If you don’t see yourself in Jessica Darling, you’re not looking hard enough.