A book to delight teen-age girls, ["The Sea Gulls Woke Me"] is the best yet of the three junior novels, or first love stories, by this writer. The problem of her sixteen-year-old heroine is a vital one: to escape the domination of a fussy, smothering sort of mother, and find herself as an individual…. [Jean's mistaken "crush" and] her first real love affair, are very well handled. The philosophy offered, the underlying tone, and Jean's relation to all the adults concerned are fine. There is a bitter "older man" (of twenty-five, a writer) who causes her roommate trouble, and is a bit overdone. But he adds speed to a rather quiet plot.

Miss Stolz has a wide range of references to books, places, poetry, people, also a quick sense of humor. All this she pours out easily, but a bit too freely, with an over-use of carefully unusual...