A photography-class assignment on the meaning of family prompts Maude, an adopted high school senior in Florida, to learn about her deceased birth mother, Claire.Maude's Indian-American BFF, Treena, attends Florida State University, which Claire attended and where Maude might apply. Parental permission secured, the white teen visits Treena, who promises to help; but partying, drinking, and hanging with her new boyfriend means she's not there for Maude. Luckily, Treena's dorm mate, an appealing Star Wars nerd, steps in and joins Maude's quest, which leads to Claire's high school, teachers, friends, foes, and family. Each discovery forces Maude to re-examine her image of Claire, as she also does with Treena. Maude's high-concept struggle to condense a process into one snapshot has depth and pathos, but it is undermined by the incomplete portrait of adoption. A bright, artistic, edgy teen from a troubled background, Claire elicits Maude's compassion, along with repulsion and relief at having been adopted by better parents. Maude expresses no sense of deep personal loss. After all, her affluent, "fit" parents have given her a better life than her impoverished birth family could. Claire's (atypical) death in childbirth at 18 safely removed her from the story; Maude's goal is to understand her mother as a teen in order to complete her own story. Claire's peers play a greater role in Maude's search than her birth family.Adoption entails lifelong losses along with joys, but its hard questions and nuanced complexities are airbrushed from this affluence-cushioned world. (Fiction. 12-16)

High school senior Maude has to complete a project about her family for her photography class. This may sound uncomplicated, but Maude was born when her birth mother was only a college freshman, and her birth mother died just after she gave Maude up for adoption. All Maude knows of her is that her name was Claire and she briefly attended Florida State University. Determined to find out more, Maude arranges to spend her fall break with her best friend, Treena, a freshman at FSU. She cannot wait to include Treena in her quest, but Treena seems to be more interested in her new boyfriend, Trey. As Maude's search for answers continually turns up dead ends, and Treena grows ever more distant, Maude finds a new friend in Bennett, a geeky college boy who teaches her that her past does not need to define her future.Maude is not always a likeable heroine, and many of the tropes in this storybest friends growing apart when separated by college, adopted teens searching for birth parentsare familiar. The friendship and tension between Maude and Treena, however, is well drawn and realistic, and Maude's blossoming relationship with Bennett is sweet. The setting on the campus of FSU is vividly represented; subplots involving college pranks help bring it to life. Underage drinking and mentions of casual hook-ups make this a choice for older teens and new adults. Give this to older fans of Sarah Dessen.Elizabeth Norton.