This is, I think, a "young adult" book. I read it anyway and found it to be very well written and absorbing. There's a clever and not overdone Peter Pan motif, what with Wendy being named Wendy and another major character, a catalyst for much of what happens, being named Peter.

Kingman does an amazing job of balancing both a gentle and optimistic story with some harrowing elements that are true to real life's possibilities.

The book itself is somewhat protective of Wendy, but while she is shielded from a lot of harm that could come to her, both she and the reader are aware of the potential dangers.

At one point she takes way too much speed, under the mistaken impression that the pills are aspirin and will stave off a debilitating headache, and blacks out at a party. She wakes up to find her earrings were stolen, but realizes with alarm that any number of things could have happenedd and she there wouldn't have been anything she could have done about it.

The other young people she meets are all well drawn and distinct characters, from aspiring photojournalists to rich kids more or less playing at being Bohemia to a traumatized Vietnam vet—still a kid but permanently damaged.

It's not always to tell the kids on drugs from the kids with serious mental illnesses, the kids who can check in and check out of the hippie scene at well from the kids who cram themselves into rat-infested basements with dozens of others because they have no other place to go.

I don't suppose anybody could or would write a book like this today. It's hard to imagine such a book being published. But it's a remarkable and rewarding novel as well as a time capsule of sorts.