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Summary
Summary
I was forced to face the upsetting fact of my fourteen-year-old life: I'm on my own. It's up to me to create the life I want. I must be mistress of my destiny or I'll never even skim the surface of normal. And that's when the whole fiasco began. One summer day, Libby and her best friend, Nadine, come up with a plan. Before their freshman year is over, they will each experience a serious kiss. Libby already has her ideal boy picked out. Everything is set. But Libby's beer-guzzling father and fast food-addict mother have another plan: The family is moving. To the middle of nowhere. Away from all of Libby's friends and all hope of a normal life, much less a boyfriend. As her life and her family are falling apart, Libby starts to wonder, Is happiness really about being normal? Or is being happy maybe just...being yourself? As she begins to figure out who she is, Libby discovers the most amazing thing of all -- being herself could also be the key to a perfect, incredible, wonderful, serious kiss.
Reviews (5)
School Library Journal Review
Gr 7-9-Fourteen-year-old Libby Madrigal's biggest fear is becoming her parents; her father drinks too much, and her mother is an obese fast-food junkie, and they fight constantly. Bringing friends home is nearly impossible. Still, Libby tries to focus on her freshman-year goal: to have a serious kiss. This becomes more difficult when her father loses his job and the family moves to Barstow, CA, to live with Libby's grandmother, who the teen thought had passed away years ago. Living in a retirement trailer-park community in the middle of the desert is bad enough; to make matters worse, the kids at Libby's new school are cruel. Just as she thinks her life is over, her grandmother gives her some good advice that she heeds, and she begins to see the world in a whole new light. Readers will feel Libby's anxiety and agony as she deals with her family situation. The plot moves along with many surprising turns that keep readers guessing; there is never a dull moment. Just when they think that the protagonist's life is going to be OK, another tragedy strikes, but the novel ends on a happy, possibly unrealistic note, as the family agrees to enter counseling and Libby meets the guy of her dreams.-Leigh Ann Morlock, formerly at Vernonia School District, OR (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Publisher's Weekly Review
In this uneven first novel, Libby's dysfunctional family suddenly moves from its Chatsworth, Calif., home to a trailer park in the desert town of Barstow, and the 14-year-old narrator must quickly say goodbye to her best friend and former life-without getting a chance to have her dream "serious kiss" with popular Zach Nash. But in the hot desert, living next door to a grandmother she thought was dead, she begins to realize she isn't "so alone after all," especially when she makes a new offbeat best friend and boyfriend. Libby's family doesn't move until nearly halfway through the book, and readers may find the sudden change in plot direction jarring. Hogan creates some memorable moments, as Libby learns to enjoy life in the desert (eating burritos with a friend at a restaurant on the wrong side of the tracks, or learning about Barstow's plant life from another friend), but some of the author's flourishes, such as the trailer her grandmother lives in, which she converted into "one big, gleaming, air-conditioned kitchen," come across as bizarre. Because comical details such as these mix with serious themes, often addressed in a preachy tone (such as Libby's father's alcoholism: "Alcohol stole my father from me. It replaced him with a man who was mean to my mother and made our whole family feel like hiding"), readers may feel off-balance. Ages 12-up. (Jan.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Horn Book Review
Ninth-grade Libby is saddled with an alcoholic father and a junk-food-junkie mother, both of whom make her life miserable. She's convinced that one serious kiss will help change her life for the better. Despite the lighthearted title and jacket cover, this sometimes uneven novel focuses less on the kiss and more on Libby's dysfunctional family. (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted. All rights reserved.
Kirkus Review
Fourteen-year-old Libby's first-person narration of her trials and tribulations starts off gratingly but becomes likable two-thirds of the way through. Libby's screwy family includes a mother more likely to say "dinneroo" than "dinner" and an older brother who hides cigarettes in his hair; worse, no one sees her, her father's an alcoholic, and family dysfunctions go unacknowledged. Lamenting that "everything awful happen[s] to me," Libby's yanked out of her small town and moved to a Barstow trailer park (surprise: it's a retirement home!) next door to an unknown woman (surprise: it's her grandmother!). Far away from her old best friend (and co-conspirator in getting a "serious kiss" from a boy), Libby forms a new life in the tiny desert town. Dad's alcoholism hits bottom and rehab ensues; Libby's tone shifts, thankfully, from an overdramatic annoyedness to an open realness. The serious kiss comes in a wonderful final chapter containing a rare gift: a supremely satisfying last sentence. (Fiction. 11-14) Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
Gr. 7-10. A San Fernando Valley girl and high-school freshman, Libby Madrigal is, like most teens, mortified by her family. Older brother Rif smokes on the sly, little brother Dirk drools, her mom is loud, fat, and relentlessly cheerful, their ancient Chihuahua yips constantly and poops in front of boys Libby likes, and her dad is an abusive alcoholic whose disease is tearing their family apart. This is a somewhat disconcerting but ultimately effective look at alcoholism within a family. The initial lighthearted tone alternates with screaming parental fights and tense family meals, but the narrative eventually settles into the darker reality of Libby's despair and anger as her father's many failures force the family to move, to get counseling, and to begin the road back to some sort of functionality. The cover photo of a cringing Chihuahua with a huge lipstick kiss emphasizes the light side; readers anticipating comedy may be in for a shock. --Debbie Carton Copyright 2005 Booklist