'If I love you am I trapped forever?' by M.E.Kerr is an enchanting, deep, moving story. When I first started reading the book I thought Alan (the lead character) was going to go on about how great, cool, and good-looking he is throughout the whole story. As I read further, I found that he really did get what's coming to him.
The tale is about a 16-year-old boy named Alan, who has everything going for him. A beautiful girlfriend (Leah), a great mum, a great grandad, he is on the school football team and is the most popular guy in the school, he is "dynamite"! (pg. 9) But all that changes when Duncan "Doomed" Stein, a gangly, homely loner, moves to Cayuta, New York and his parents open a place for drying out drunks called rushing brook.. At first, he doesn't seem a threat to anyone, least of all Alan. But that's before he publishes his own newspaper, "Remote", and attracts all the "lonely hearts" at the high school with the anonymous dating ads. Soon everyone at Cayuta High is no longer interested in going steady with each other, but trying to find a more meaningful alternative to love. Alan and Leah, being the ideal couple, seem immune to this fad, until Alan reads the love letter Doomed has given Leah. Then nothing makes sense to Alan anymore. Besides losing his girlfriend to the biggest dork in school, he has to struggle with the sudden reappearance of his deadbeat father who left his mother when he was a baby, the crush he has on Doomed's beautiful mother, and the secret affair she has with Alan's football coach.
