The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants
Ann Brashares
 In the first novel in the series, we are introduced to four high school students, Lena Kaligaris, Tibby Rollins, Bridget Vreeland, and Carmen Lowell, who have been best friends "since birth" (their mothers attended prenatal exercise classes together). The summer before their junior year of high school, Carmen finds a pair of old jeans that fits each of them perfectly despite their different sizes, convincing the girls that the pants are magical. They share the "traveling pants" among themselves over the summer while they are separated. Lena spends the summer with her grandparents in Santorini, Greece. While there, she meets Kostos, the grandson of some of Lena's grandparents friends, and he becomes interested in Lena. Though she does reciprocate his feelings, she is shy and is unable to express them. Lena goes skinny-dipping and is accidentally seen by Kostos, and her grandparents assume she has been assaulted by him when she is unable to explain what happened. Later in the summer, Lena explains what happened in order to repair the rift between her and Kostos' grandparents, and confesses to Kostos that she loves him. Tibby spends the summer working at a department store, planning to make a documentary of her experiences there. She meets a 12-year-old girl named Bailey, whom she is initially annoyed with, but becomes close with by the end of summer as they work on Tibby's documentary. Bailey is hospitalized and dies at the end of the novel from leukemia, which results in Tibby refocusing her documentary to be about the summer they spent together. Carmen goes to South Carolina to spend the summer with her father, whom she has grown apart from since he and Carmen's mother divorced several years before. Carmen is surprised to learn that her father is engaged and lives with a woman with two grown children of her own. After being frustrated at feeling left out of her father's new family, she breaks a window in their house and returns home to her mother. She eventually reconciles with her father and attends his wedding at the urging of her friends. Bridget attends a soccer camp in Baja California, Mexico. While there, she meets Eric, one of the coaches, and immediately falls for him. Despite coach-camper relationships being completely off-limits, Bridget actively pursues him anyway by running with him and going to his room in her underwear. She eventually manages to seduce him and loses her virginity to him, which turns out to be too much for her to handle and after walking off the field during the championship, she takes to her bed for days. Eric later visits her and asks her to take a walk with him, where he tells her that if they had met under different circumstances, he would worship her the way she deserved to be worshiped. Lena comes to comfort her and takes her home.