The plot itself [in Of Love and Death and Other Journeys] is interesting enough, but what makes the book really entertaining is Isabelle Holland's ability to capture all the precarious qualities of teenhood. Difficult as it must be to write through the eyes of a fifteen-year-old when one has passed that transient age, the author manages it with style and wit. The desperate throes of first love, the longing to be twenty-one, can be relived vicariously in these pages. The author's straightforward sense of humor when describing people and situations made me laugh out loud, a response rare indeed to novels these days.