FREE: Beach Week by Susan Coll

The listing, Beach Week by Susan Coll has ended.

Naughty girls. For the purposes of this agreement, a girl shall be deemed a naughty girl if she is found by a court or an arbitrator to be partially or totally responsible for an event or omission that causes a loss, damage, or injury covered by this agreement or if she or her parents acknowledge such responsibility in writing.

So begins a clause in the Beach Week "Shared Liability Agreement," a sterling piece of legalese tailored to this special occasion. If Leah and Charles Adler don't sign the document, their teenage daughter: Jordan, could be the only girl in her group to miss out on all the fun.

But just what kind of fun might that be? Beach Week means seven whole days of debauched celebration a time-honored tradition in which the D.C. suburbs' newest high school grads flock to Chelsea Beach -- bereft of adult supervision. In this warmhearted comedy, ten teenage girls plot an unhinged blowout the likes of which their young lives have never seen. They plan to smuggle in vodka, suing water bottles; they start hoarding prescription drugs by the oxen. Meanwhile, their misguided, affluent parents are too busy worrying about legal liabilities to fret over some missing pills or random hookups.

For Jordan Adler and her family, though, this rite of passage threatens to become more than just frivolous fun. Jordan is caught in a baffling romance with Khalid, a college senior who prefers to make his advances via text message. Her parents have plenty on their plate, too: their marriage is in shambles, their house is languishing on the market, and the bills are stacking up. Now they need to indemnify the beach house against possible damaged from "naughty girls," who may or may not include their daughter. With all that stress, it soon seems Leah and Charles are having as irresponsibly as Jordan and her friends. When Beach Week at last unfurls, it's hard to say who's supervising whom.