I'm having a hard time articulating anything about this book, but I'm going to try. I think the writing is occasionally a little clunky (especially at the beginning), but on the whole I think Scoppettone does a really good job, especially with the varied voices. I think there are moments where it gets a little preachy (as one might expect from a YA novel from 1978 about lesbians by a lesbian), but I also think it makes a very conscious effort to realistically portray a range of reactions, positive and negative and in between, to Jaret and Peggy being lesbians.
and, as other people have noted, it's not a punishment story. it does include (center on, even) a rape, and Scoppettone doesn't hold back either in writing that scene or in writing the aftermath — Jaret trying to deal with a traumatic experience, the legal system's prejudice against her both as a woman and as a lesbian, public reaction when she is outed by her rapist, etc.
but it doesn't give up, and it doesn't tell us Jaret deserved what she got. and it doesn't end with any of the classic tropes: there are no dead lesbians, and neither Jaret nor Peggy "goes back to being straight".
And so what if happy endings didn't exist? Happy moments did.
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