Overnight Sensation
Grade 8 Up–Cook continues with the characters she introduced inSo Lyrical(NAL, 2005). Trace is on her way to meet her mysterious biological father, who has some glitzy job in L.A. that he is unwilling to divulge on the phone. Accompanying her is her boyfriend, with whom things are starting to go sour. When Trace finds out that her father is the producer/creator of teen sensation Kandy Kane, all of her punk roots rebel against the idea of associating with the pop princess. While the chick-lit genre has given readers a plethora of fun books, this one falls short. Trace is self-absorbed and overdrawn, the plot is predictable, and the ending wraps up way too neatly (especially considering all of the horrible things Trace does to her friends during the book). That said, the novel is part of a genre that attracts teen girls and will be enjoyed by a few undiscriminating readers.–Rainey Wyatt, Louisville Free Public Library, KYCopyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.