Triple Trouble

Whitney Cousins #4

by Jean Thesman

While Heather plans the town centennial and feuds with the town's mayor, Amelia tries her hand at work as a clown and Erin falls madly in love for the very first time. Original.

Genres: Young Adult

160 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 1992

About the author

Jean Thesman was a widely read and award-winning American author known for her young adult fiction, with a career spanning over 25 years. Her novels often explored themes of family, identity, and belonging, frequently featuring heroines who find their place in the world by uncovering truths about their families and forming chosen connections. “I loved telling the story,” she once wrote, “because I really believed that families were made up of the people you wanted, not the people you were stuck with.”
Born with a passion for storytelling and literacy, she learned to read before starting school and recalled having to wait until she was six years old before being allowed her first library card. Throughout her career, she authored around 40 books, most under her own name but a few under the pseudonym T.J. Bradstreet.
Thesman published a wide range of novels for teens and middle-grade readers, including stand-alone works such as The Rain Catchers, Calling the Swan, and Cattail Moon, as well as series like The Whitney Cousins, The Birthday Girls, and The Elliott Cousins. Her lyrical style, emotional depth, and strong female characters earned her a loyal readership. Notable works like The Ornament Tree and In the House of the Queen’s Beasts remain particularly admired for their nuanced storytelling and emotional resonance.
She was a longtime resident of Washington state and an active member of The Authors Guild and the Society for Children's Book Writers and Illustrators. Jean Thesman passed away in 2016 at the age of 86, leaving behind a significant legacy in young adult literature.

Reviews

[Marian · Rating 3 out of 5]

Triple Trouble is an odd duck. The previous three Whitney Cousins books manage to not really have the cousins interact in person all that much, which is interesting considering Erin moves in with Amelia, and this book somehow manages to keep that trend even with all three living together for a summer.

Instead of having the book divided up and chapters told by each cousin, we spend our time with Erin who has mellowed considerably since her book. I guess this makes sense since Amelia and Heather both had their love stories chronicled and Erin's book did have a sort of romance but it's said to have never really gotten off the ground by the time Triple Trouble starts. Plus you could argue that Erin's book was really about her finding out that she was worth being loved at all, by anyone.

It was an interesting read, though it kills me that the cover shows Heather being pretty blonde and yet the only time we see Heather not running around doing things for the Centennial, she's bemoaning not being blonde, which leads to the important lesson of not bleaching your hair without at least one person actually knowing what they're doing.

There's no happy ending for Erin, as she has to leave her first love behind, but I like to think that they found each other again.