The thing that makes True Blue so unusual is the way Jeana handles the problem she faces. To tell you what that is might prove to be a spoiler. Let's just say that it appears that her approach to it seems so improbable that one has to believe it. It sets the reader to wondering why a bright young girl would make the decisions our protagonist did. At first I thought Jeana's decisions curious because she lived in a different time, but that didn't set quite right. The answer I settled on was influenced by the recent UCLA study that shows the matter in our frontal lobes is not fully developed until we are about 25 years old. (It’s a bit earlier for girls but not early enough to save them from some very bad decisions in high school). That brought the story up-to-date. It is highly unlikely that the human brain will begin to mature more quickly anytime soon, so it goes back to that lack-of-judgment thing. Teens then and now might react as Jeana did. Flawed reasoning might get them into a whole lot of hot water.