My Tiki Girl [Hardcover]

Jennifer McMahon (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 15, 2008

Maggie was looking for a friend in Dahlia. She never guessed she’d find love, too.

All the tenth-grade girls hate Dahlia Wainwright—a smart, natural beauty and freaky outsider all in one. And that’s exactly what Maggie Keller is drawn to, for she herself is an outsider, having withdrawn from the high school elite crowd after a car accident that killed her mother—an accident for which she blames herself. But Dahlia’s friendship—a manic journey into new identities and outrageous behavior— transforms Maggie in ways she could never have imagined. In her stunning first young adult novel, bestselling adult author Jennifer McMahon paints a lush portrait of the healing power of love.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

As McMahon's (Promise Not to Tell) uneven first YA novel begins, 10th-grader Maggie, the narrator, has ensconced herself in the dysfunctional family of her new best friend, Dahlia Wainwright, whose imbalanced mother uses dolls to "predict the future, or maybe even control it." While describing the Wainwrights' rituals in great and often burdensome detail, the author gradually reveals that the formerly popular Maggie has survived a car accident that killed her mother and has left her with scars, a limp and a terrible sense of guilt. Maggie admires Dahlia (who "leaves traces of herself wherever she goes, the way a shooting star leaves a streak of light behind it"), and soon her feelings turn sexual. To this already freighted plot McMahon adds a story line about an improbably good band which the girls form with two classmates, both of whom seem cast much too conveniently. Although much of the story is far-fetched and ancillary characters are unconvincing, Maggie's feelings for Dahlia are believable, and lyrical descriptions buoy the prose. A satisfying end rewards readers who make it to the finish line. Ages 14-up.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From School Library Journal

Grade 9 Up—Maggie's sense of self was shattered, along with her leg, in a car crash that killed her mother two years ago. Now 15, she is reborn in the alternate identity of "LaSamba," an eager follower in the wild, creative fantasy world of her intoxicating new classmate Dahlia ("Tiki") and her mentally ill mother. In this emotionally powerful and realistic story set in the 1990s in a small town in Connecticut, Maggie loses herself completely in her new identity, and slowly but surely comes to find a true, new self that includes the indisputable—but scary—fact that she is a lesbian and in love with Tiki. Readers are swept along with Maggie's swirling feelings, making it easy to understand how easily this fragile, sensitive girl could lose herself. Secondary characters also have complex emotions and motivations. Had this novel been published 15 years ago, it would've been a groundbreaking addition to LGBT literature; as it is, it still stands strong as a period testament to the anti-"lesbo" feelings of that era, as well as simply a well-written tale of self-discovery. Sex scenes focus on emotion and are not overly explicit.—Rhona Campbell, Washington, DC Public Library
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 14 and up
  
• Hardcover: 240 pages
• Publisher: Dutton Juvenile (May 15, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0525479430
• ISBN-13: 978-0525479437
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.8 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,152,606 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

I was born in 1968 and grew up in my grandmother's house in suburban Connecticut, where I was convinced a ghost named Virgil lived in the attic. I wrote my first short story in third grade. I graduated with a BA from Goddard College in 1991 and then studied poetry for a year in the MFA in Writing Program at Vermont College. A poem turned into a story, which turned into a novel, and I decided to take some time to think about whether I wanted to write poetry or fiction. After bouncing around the country, I wound up back in Vermont, living in a cabin with no electricity, running water, or phone with my partner, Drea, while we built our own house. Over the years, I have been a house painter, farm worker, paste-up artist, Easter Bunny, pizza delivery person, homeless shelter staff member, and counselor for adults and kids with mental illness -- I quit my last real job in 2000 to work on writing full time. In 2004, I gave birth to our daughter, Zella. In 2005, we left the woods (for now), and moved to Barre, Vermont -- producer of one-third of all the granite gravestones and mausoleums in the US.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars You don't have to be a teenager to appreciate this book..., July 21, 2009

By 

D. Jennings "greeneking" (upstate NY) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: My Tiki Girl (Hardcover)

I'm a far-from-young adult but I do like to read YA novels now and then, and I finished this one in less than a day, just because I was eager to know how it turned out. I was rooting for Maggie and Dahlia because they are both enormously likeable characters, both dealing with very difficult circumstances and yet able to maintain a sense of humor and empathize with others. Yes, maybe I'd have liked a happier ending, but this is a REALISTIC ending. Ditto the main and supporting characters, very believable. Nobody's all good or all bad, they just have all-too-human flaws. And even if you're neither a teenager nor a lesbian, the feelings Maggie expresses will ring true, the equal parts elation and frustration when you love someone but can't say so, when you think it MIGHT be mutual but don't know quite how to be sure. Jennifer McMahon gets it, and she knows how to write it. You don't hear the author's voice, you hear MAGGIE's voice, and by the end of the book, Maggie seems like a friend you've known a long time.

Now I am hoping that the very end of the book might leave room for a sequel. I'd certainly like to read the next chapter in Maggie's life.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A story of first love and hardship, recommended for advanced teen readers, October 11, 2008

By 

Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: My Tiki Girl (Hardcover)

Maggie Keller used to be popular - before the accident she thinks she caused, that killed her mother. Now she walks with a limp and has a scar - and is drawn to different people such as Dahlia, the strange new girl at school. Their volatile friendship involves a degree of romance and a lot of confusion in this story of first love and hardship, recommended for advanced teen readers.

4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Hated the Ending, May 23, 2008

By 

Karusichan "Karusichan" (Lansing, MI. USA.) - See all my reviews

This review is from: My Tiki Girl (Hardcover)

Maggie was in a car accident with her mom. The crash resulted in the death of her mother and her leg being put back together with pins and screws. Maggie feels like Frankenstein's monster partially because of her leg and largely because of how ugly she feels over her own guilt in her mother's death. She has let her guilt eat a hole into her life, wrecking her relationships with her friends, her dad, and even the boy she was seeing. Nothing is ever going to be like it was before the accident.

Suddenly, there is a new girl in school who mocks everything about her previous life without knowing it. Dahlia Wainwright is a punk girl who reads poetry and smokes cloves. And even though Maggie decides to keep many things a secret from the get go she immediately shows Dahlia her scar. It is this simple act that wins Dahlia from the word go.

Right away Dahlia and Maggie are inseparable. Dahlia introduces Maggie to her crazy family; her younger brother, Jonah, who thinks he's a wizard and her mother, Leah, who has been in and out of mental institutions and now self-medicates with alcohol and entertaining her children with wild stories. Leah collects dolls, which she names to represent people in her life, and has a sad clown doll for Maggie that she names LaSamba. Dahlia has a hula girl named Tiki. Pretty soon Dahlia and Maggie slip from their real lives to this make believe life of Tiki and LaSamba, and Maggie starts to develop feelings for the bohemian punk Dahlia that are more than platonic. But when Dahlia starts to reveal her real desires, which are to have a normal life, can Maggie bring herself to quell her desire for Dahlia so she can be "normal" again?

This book started out strong for me, though it did remind me a touch of the film "Heavenly Creatures". I was right on board with it, until the ending, which I felt like was against type of the few characters who brought it about. The fact that McMahon wrote the few key players so specifically and then had them do a 180 on their personality in the final moments made me wonder two things. 1) Had she written herself into a corner in the end and had to rely on stereotypes for a young adult lesbian novel... and 2) Was it her intent to write a stereotyped lesbian novel from the get go, but did she add enough quirks to this to make it interesting in the beginning? I liked it in the start. I really did. But I hated the ending. Hated it. Hated it. Hated it. Why would these characters turn on each other like they did? It made no sense. And it ruined the book for me.

A for effort, but with the ending, I gotta give it a C. She had me at hello... she lost me at "Abomination!"