It's not hard to see why Norma Fox Mazer has found a place among the most popular writers for young adults these days. At her best, Mazer can cut right to the bone of teenage troubles and then show us how the wounds will heal. She can set down the everyday scenes of her characters' lives in images that are scalpel-sharp. In Mazer's books, we find lovers who cheat and fathers who cry. We find elephant jokes and pink champagne. We find college students who live in apartments which smell of cats and we find high school kids who walk through corridors which smell of "lysol, oregano (pizza for lunch again) and cigarette smoke." What's apparent throughout all of this is that Mazer has taken great care to get to know the world she writes about. She delves into the very heart of it with a sure and practiced hand….

In Someone to Love, Mazer deals with the subject of living together ("L.T." in college lingo). Nina Bloom, a college sophomore meets and falls in love with Mitch Beers, a house painter and college dropout. In relatively short order, the couple decides to live together and Nina moves her clothing and her cat into Mitch's apartment.

For a while, they exult in their new intimacy. Nina learns to eat breakfast to please Mitch. Mitch puts up with Emmett, the cat, for Nina's sake. "If the heat went off they got into bed. Nothing bothered them. If they ran out of bread or Band-Aids or bath powder, they bundled up and went out together to shop."…

Mazer gets all these cozy details just right. And, as the honeymoon ends and things get less than cozy between Mitch and Nina, the details are just as true to life. There are the fights over silly little things—shoelaces and sugar in the coffee. There are the kiss-and-make-up episodes which grow few and far-between. And, finally, there are big issues which become the big problems—Nina's attraction to her handsome English professor and Mitch's obvious interest in Lynell, Nina's former roommate.

The pieces of this story fit together neatly. The only trouble is that it's all a bit too neat. We are left with the feeling that the cards were stacked against Nina and Mitch from the start, that they were set up to fall apart before our eyes so that we could learn from their experience. The ending of their story is predictable, but they carry it off with the good grace and show of strength that is typical of Mazer's characters.

In its sharpest moments, Norma Fox Mazer's writing can etch a place in our hearts. In the passages that are perhaps not so well-honed, her people and their stories still manage to make us care. And that is no small achievement.