It’s the end of the school year, and 15-year-old Natalie has a whole summer ahead of her with only dance classes lined up to keep her occupied. What should be just another innocent season in the sun quickly becomes something much more complicated and angst-ridden when she gets involved with her best friend’s 19-year-old brother.

Not surprisingly, the older boy is bad news for naive Natalie, who falls hard and moves too fast for her own comfort. Before you know it, there are scenes of alcohol and drug use, sex, sneaking out, and underage clubbing.

Victoria, B.C., author Jodi Lundgren loads a lot of “firsts” into Natalie’s summer, but they are relayed so passively as to render them non-events. Even Natalie’s description of losing her virginity is tepid. The narrative is ostensibly in diary form, but certainly doesn’t come across that way, with little in the language that realistically represents the way teenaged girls feel (i.e., everything to the nth degree) or write. (For one thing, there is a notable lack of ALL CAPS, exclamation points, and swearing.)

The novel’s secondary characters are a parade of tired stereotypes: the closeted, hippy-dippy lesbian mother; the angsty, black-clothed, bitchy best friend with the difficult home life; the super-supportive, gay dance teacher; the sophisticated, slightly older dancer from Montreal, etc.

Natalie is supposed to be extremely passionate about dance, but again, Lundgren fails to infuse her prose with emotion. Despite lengthy descriptions of performances and routines, dancing seems to be just another thing Natalie gets up to, rather than something she feels strongly about.

Leap covers a lot of territory that teen girls will identify with, but the dance aspect alone isn’t enough to elevate this novel above the many others that have tackled similar subject matter with more finesse and realism.