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The New York Observer has just released a list of ten must-read summer books. Guess what made the cut:

Girl Gone Wild

The clumsiest part of Rites of Spring (Break): An Ivy League Novel (Delta, $10, in stores) is the terrible, totally tone-deaf title. The book itself is terrific, though, wound tightly around an expert conspiracy plot and a bumpy, convincing love story. Diana Peterfreund’s protagonist, a senior at “Eli University” named Amy, is a member of Rose & Grave, the most elite secret society on campus. This is Ms. Peterfreund’s third book about Amy and her club, and like the first two installments, Rites finds her struggling not only with boys but also with the bonds of tradition and authority. This time she squares off against the members of a rival secret society, who wage a brutal campaign of humiliating pranks against her on campus and then on an island off the coast of Florida, where past and present Rose & Gravers all go for spring break. Though Rites is not an overtly political novel, it would be insensitive to ignore the parallels between Amy’s travails and the quagmire in Iraq: This is a story about how to deal with perpetual war carried out unpredictably and unconventionally—how to survive, while keeping your sense of humor, when you’ve been targeted by an invisible enemy whose demands your pride will not permit you to meet. It’s very funny, also: After Amy almost drowns as a result of someone tampering with her life jacket, her head is “whirring” so hard that you could “pour some rum in [her] skull” and make daiquiris. —Leon Neyfa

This political allegorist wonders if it’s the subtitle that so offends Mr. Neyfakh. He would not be alone. It’s really the only thing she can imagine bothering him, as she has yet to meet the person who doesn’t like the title Rites of Spring (Break). She is also hugely humbled by the inclusion, given the fabulous company:

• The Enchantress of Florence, Salman Rushdie
• Dear American Airlines, Jonathan Miles
• The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, David Wroblewsk
• Somebody Else’s Daughter, Elizabeth Brundage
• When We Were Romans, Matthew Kneale
• Schooled, Anisha Lakhani
• What I Talk About When I Talk About Running , Haruki Murakami
• Pharmakon, Dirk Wittenborn
• The Wrecking Crew, Thomas Frank