Happy Endings Are All Alike deals … with lesbian teen love and is a much stronger political and sexual statement [than Trying Hard to Hear You].

The story is told by one of the participants, not an observer, making explicit scenes of at least foreplay inevitable. The author has also worked in a steamy heterosexual rape scene, so that she can get in the fashionable clichés on that subject, too. It is to Scoppettone's credit as a writer that, in spite of all this propaganda overload, she has created a touching love story with interesting characters and some suspense. And at last, as the title slyly suggests, young adult literature has a novel about homosexuality that does not end with the obligatory grisly sudden death of one of the lovers.

Patty Campbell, in her review of "Happy Endings Are All Alike," in Wilson Library Bulletin (copyright © 1978 by the...