‘I Think I Love You’ recalls more innocent time

Remember your childhood crushes on the gorgeous boys who were the pop singing idols of the day?

For my generation, there was Donny Osmond, Leif Garrett and David Cassidy. In 1974, I was 13 years old and I wavered from having a crush on Donny or David – but then again, what 13-year-old girl in 1974 didn’t?

Author Allison Pearson knows exactly what it’s like to crush on David Cassidy, and in her latest book, “I Think I Love You,” she creates a lively and charming story of two teens from Wales and their journey to worship at the feet of David Cassidy at the fateful 1974 White City concert in London, a trip that would change many lives.

Best friends Petra and Sharon are 13 years old and are obsessed with any and everything David Cassidy. The English version of his fan magazine with its wealth of information about their favorite star is like manna from heaven to them. As the girls struggle with the usual angst of teenage years — including snarky girlfriends, snarky mothers, snarky teachers, etc. — they know they have a constant idol in the revered Cassidy.

The girls fill out the Ultimate David Cassidy Quiz contest in hope of winning a trip to see their favorite singer in California, and while anxiously waiting for the results, they travel to London to see Cassidy in what is billed as his last European concert at White City Stadium. The pandemonium that breaks out at this concert (a true event which resulted in the death of a young fan) will alter the girls’ lives and stay in their memories forever.

Little do the girls realize, but the letters found in their David Cassidy magazines weren’t written by Cassidy at all, but rather by 24-year-old Bill, a frustrated writer who earns his living writing muck about Cassidy while he yearns to interview the likes of Led Zeppelin and Eric Clapton. Bill is sent to cover the giant concert at White City and is witness to the carnage that results from thousands of overwhelmed teenage girls surging toward their idol. It's an event he won’t forget, as are the two young girls he meets afterward, one of whom had been injured in the fray.

Fast forward 27 years and Petra is now a mom herself, pushing 40, on the brink of divorce and struggling with her own 13-year-old daughter when she discovers a dusty letter in her recently deceased mother’s closet declaring her the winner of the David Cassidy contest she and Sharon had worked so hard on all those years ago. On a whim, Petra calls up the publishing company and they agree to honor the award and fly Petra and the now happily married Sharon to Las Vegas to meet none other than David Cassidy himself.

When Petra meets with the publisher, she is surprised to find that it is Bill, the entertainment writer she had met at the White City concert. When he confesses to having been the ghost writer behind the letters that she had dreamed on as a girl, Petra doesn’t know whether to be angry or grateful to the man who unknowingly had been part of her young life. As she and Bill begin to get to know their adult selves, Petra finds herself wondering if she could learn to cherish this man who had a roundabout claim on her girlhood heart for so long.

Pearson has tapped into every woman’s fantasy of meeting their childhood idols with “I Think I Love You.” With her story bouncing back and forth between young Petra, older Petra and Bill himself, Pearson gives the reader a fun and fast-paced story that will touch their hearts as well as jog their memories of simpler, more innocent times.