Mix-Tape Mondays: Guilty Pleasures

You lucky thing you, just for a surprise this week I have a

playlist ready to roll.

Two larger-than-life high school hotties uncross their stars in the teen romance Perfect Chemistry, and I’ve set it all to music just for you:

1. Primadonna – Marina and The Diamonds

Brittany is a perfectly attired blonde princess exiting her mansion one morning, planning to drive her convertible to school and meet up with her quarterback boyfriend. She will say all the right things, look just how everyone expects her to look, and be the center of it all. Trust that it’s because she has problems.

2. La Esquina – La Plebe

Alex is a first-generation Mexican gangster with a motorcycle, poised to move up in the gang as soon as he graduates and doesn’t go to college (not because he’s not smart enough, because trying to leave town would leave him and his family vulnerable to gang violence).

3. Girl All the Bad Guys Want – Bowling for Soup

Even Alex at his toughest and most ethnocentric can’t help but ruminate on Brittany’s hotness. She’s more like the girl all the guys want, period.

4. Tonight (I’m Lovin’ You) – Enrique Iglesias

When Alex and Brittany are paired up as lab partners he’s all bravado and bald insinuations, much like this Enrique Iglesias song. He goes so far as to make a bet with his buddies that he can bed Brittany before Christmas. The only reason I didn’t go with the hilariously over-the-top unrated version of this song is because this book is supposed to be aimed at high schoolers.

5. Toxic – Britney Spears (Peter Rauhofer Reconstruction)

As much as Brittany wants to shut Alex down with a sneer at every turn he is just as terribly hot as she is, and she feels attraction creeping through her system like an image-destroying poison. She’s interested, but not about to let him know.

6. Crazy in Love – Beyoncé, JAY Z

Eventually there’s no denying what either of them are feeling, and though nobody in their lives is very happy about it they are all about following their hormones wherever they may lead.

7. Ella Me Levanto – Daddy Yankee

As their lust deepens into something looking more like an actual relationship, Alex opens up his world to Brittany. Part of that world is an ex-girlfriend who was rather loose with her affections and now hounds the blonde bimbo making moves on “her man”.  Neither Brittany nor Alex is afraid to parade what they’ve got going on in front of his friends and family, even if Brittany is a bit intimidated by Alex’s mom.

8. I Wanna Know What Love Is – Foreigner

This book is not subtle or delicately plotted at all. It’s power ballads and top 40 pop with painfully obvious lyrics all the way! With two leads as hot as Alex and Brittany (and in case your forget their sexiness the text will remind you again and again), it’s more a question of when than if in terms of rounding the bases.

9. Leader of the Pack – The Shangri-Las

But wait! There is some late-stage drama that threatens to tear their fragile happiness apart! It’s not really a plot twist because the groundwork has been laid throughout, but it’s pretty dramatic. Will Brittany ever see Alex again?