Teenage Dirtbag

If you enjoyed Perfect Chemistry by Simone Elkeles, you'll enjoy Teenage Dirtbag. Loveable, laidback dirtbag Kyle Loman and his friends are socially invisible. Bettina Richards is the polar opposite, living in a pressure filled bubble of popularity. When Bettina secretly spies on Kyle playing the electric guitar in a dark auditorium, he becomes anything but invisible in her eyes. Thrown together in Spain for the month of August, they embark on an unexpected friendship that borders on intimacy. Living in a sort of parallel universe, Kyle is the popular one, playing the flamenco guitar and getting unexpected female attention. Bettina is out of her element, the self-conscious American girl adrift in a sea of confident Europeans. Back in the pseudo world of Buffalo’s East McKinley High, their social stratospheres are hard to defy, but personal secrets pull Kyle and Bettina close again as they help each other cope with dyslexia, teenage angst and first love.