It’s time for a light and airy story, don’t you think?

Tell Me Three Things, by Julie Buxbaum, qualifies, even if its heroine, Jessie Holmes, has just escaped a rough year or two. By the time we meet her, she’s lost her mom to cancer. Her father remarries, one of those meet-online, get-hitched-fast things, and Jessie finds herself leaving Chicago behind, landing in the house of her new stepmother.

It’s in California, movie-land; the step-mother’s currently an executive on an “action-hero slash sci-fi feature.” So Jessie unloads the two duffel bags that contain her life into a magazine-perfect manse with multiple guest bedrooms. And at Jessie’s new private high school, she shares the hallways with students who spent their summers on faraway continents, either as adventure tourists or humanitarians. Also, her new step-brother refuses to acknowledge her on the school grounds.

He barely acknowledges her at home.

What saves Jessie is an anonymous e-mail from “Somebody/Nobody,” who has noticed her, the lost and out-of-place new girl at Wood Valley high. “SN” admits he’s male, but withholds further clues. He offers to be her “spirit guide” to the school.

He smooths Jessie’s way, doling out information. Here’s who might make a great friend. No, the cafeteria card doesn’t come pre-loaded.

Before too long, Jessie is dying to know who SN is. Author Buxbaum dangles some interesting possibilities before Jessie at parties, in classes, in the lunchroom.

As Jessie settles in, she aches over what used to be: family dinner routines back in Chicago; the milk and cookies she shared with her mother on bad days. She lost not only Mom, but Dad too, who is besotted with his wife.

Three Things adheres to the one big rule of the romance genre: it gives us an an understanding, attentive but mysterious male. So the author put one over on me, the romance-refusenik.

Buxbaum offers some good surprises here, with minimal cow patties and a likable,  introverted heroine that will have readers exclaiming, “Oh, me too!” This a no-regrets read.

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