SOLVED. Teen (college?) girl roomates. One wears vanilla extract as perfume.. [s]

[Anna]

I don't remember much about this book, but the vanilla extract thing came up in a conversation the other day about overwhelming perfume on the train and the book popped back into my head.

I do remember that there were at least three female characters living in a house together, and I feel like they were roommates at college, but I could be inventing that bit. One girl is shy and unpopular but has a crush (perhaps). Another one is horribly popular in that slightly tragic, we might be supposed to worry about her, kind of way, and now makes me think of Holly Golightly. The popular girl tells the unpopular one that wearing vanilla extract on her neck will make guys want to nibble on her.

I probably read this in the late 80s, but don't have a clear memory of the book or whether I owned it or got it from a library.

And I think there is a photography dark room involved.

[Christy]

I'm sure this is "Alamo House" by Sarah Bird. This is one of my favorite books...

[Anna]

The title doesn't sound familiar, but I read the blurb on amazon and some things match. I'll check it out this weekend and let you know if "Alamo House" is the book I'm thinking of. Thanks.

[Josie]

For some reason I thought of The Moth Diaries by Rachel Klein when I read your description, but it's probably way off...

[Anna]

I don't think its The Moth Diaries, but this one sounds good. The blurb reminds me a little of Beasts, which I love.

[Anna]

I finally got a chance to look up Alamo House (you can see how busy work has been this semster) and it IS the book I was remembering. I stayed up last night and read the entire thing. Thanks Christy. It was so much better than I remembered. I was remembering a kind romancy novel set in a college, but this was actually smart and funny with a feminist slant.