When I began to write this review I couldn't get incredibly sappy love songs out of my mind. I don't mean good love songs, the kind that can make you cry, but the ones that are too simple and cheesy to be taken seriously. Bridgette Carley's idea of what love is, is a lot like one of these songs when LETTERS TO CUPID first begins.

Bridgett has just turned thirteen and has finally made it to the top of the middle school heap. Now, the one thing she thinks will make her life complete is true love. Something beyond her parents' kind of love which is wrapped in daily details like doing the washing and making dinner --- and they haven't been really getting along or   in love-like lately, anyhow.

But the challenge of finding true love seems overwhelming when Bridgette looks around her. Has there ever been true love in small towns in the middle of Pennsylvania's Amish country? Bridgette hasn't a clue so she decides to turn to the expert of all experts, Cupid himself. When her teacher, Miss Tindall, assigns a ten page paper with the topic left up to the student, Bridgette decides it's time to get clued in. She's allowed to use a wide variety of sources for her research: books,
the Internet, interviews, and personal experience --- as long as she turns in her
topic by Friday.

LETTERS TO CUPID is a wonderful mixture of narrative forms such as letters, interviews and diary entries that comes together to create an often funny, sometimes sad, portrait of a girl who's looking forward to her first relationship. As she interviews her family and other strangers to find out how they've experienced love, Bridgette finds herself more and more confused about the whole thing. The kind of love that she wants --- the kind that shakes the world apart --- doesn't seem to be the life-building kind. To top it all off, Bridgette's confused over the notes she receives from a secret admirer. Is there such a thing as a perfect love or is love just another form of human messiness?

Despite the title, LETTERS TO CUPID isn't a romantic book but it does show how confusing the beginning of any new era in a girl's life can be fraught with confusion and humor. I enjoyed it due to both Lantz's sense of humor and her refusal to give easy answers to one of life's more perplexing questions.

   --- Reviewed by Cassia Van Arsdale