Gr 9 Up-This final book about the popular character begins with Alice McKinley heading off to college and continues up to her 60th birthday. Longtime readers of the series will enjoy following Alice; her older brother, Lester; and her lifelong friends Pamela, Elizabeth, and Gwen as they choose careers and life partners. Alice has two children who teach her a few things about what it must have been like to parent her when she was young. Naylor discusses controversial issues, especially those relating to sex, with an admirable frankness, but readers may find her stilted language and didacticism off-putting. Most of the earlier books cover a few months and, in cramming more than 40 years into this final entry, The author sacrifices some of the character and plot development that grounded her earlier works. Now I'll Tell You Everything can feel like an outline of itself, with sketchy details added in around major life milestones. Beautifully described moments-like Alice and her former classmates opening a time capsule compiled by their 12-year-old selves-pepper the novel, but unless readers have grown up loving Alice, there may not be enough to keep them reading. Gesse Stark-Smith, Multnomah County Library, Portland, OR

Naylor has given fans a gift: the chance to see how life unfolds for a beloved character. This 500-page farewell is the twenty-eighth title of a series that began in 1985, and it opens when Alice is 18 and headed off to the University of Maryland. Alice remains "the practical, sometimes funny girl who never met a question she didn't ask" throughout her life, as we follow her from college to marriage and babies, all the way up until the eve of her sixtieth birthday. Because Naylor is covering forty years here, the pace moves at quite a clip, particularly once Alice graduates from college. Obviously, teen readers will be most interested in those college and postcollege years and may find their interest waning as Alice deals with the challenges of middle age. Oh, and you're probably wondering about Patrick, Alice's boyfriend since the sixth grade (well, apart from that brief ninth-grade breakup). Do they end up together? Not telling. It's a long good-bye, but devoted fans won't want to miss it.

The 28th and last novel in this essential series is addressed to fans who want to know what happens to Alice. In almost 500 pages, Alice takes herself and her circle of childhood friends through college, marriages, child-rearing and beyond. As years fly by, traumatic events include an attempted date rape, a friend's miscarriage and her teenage daughter being caught in a beery game of strip poker. These are buried beneath flurries of happy vacation memories, emotional high points and get-togethers with close friends at sad or (more often) joyful life occasions to laugh and reminisce. What emerges is a portrait of a settled, comfortable life centered on family and relationships, with, at best, only passing mentions of academic, intellectual or professional interests. Furthermore, Alice's decades seem to pass in a timeless bubble--when, at age 60, she rereads a time-capsule letter to herself from seventh grade, for all the scene's poignancy, the setting could still be 1993, when the letter's original mention in Alice in April appeared. Alice's aspiration to live with "passion, tenderness, and joy" is only fitfully reflected in this bland memoir, and readers with, for instance, social consciences or some curiosity about the universe may by dissatisfied by her circumscribed, agnostic viewpoint. Still, as a steady, dependable guide through the perils of adolescence, Alice is unexcelled, and her legions of fans will be pleased to see her so well rewarded. (Fiction. 12-16, adult)