Now You See Her [Paperback]

Jacquelyn Mitchard (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 19, 2008

For Hope Shay the entire world is a stage. Really.

Acting has been her dream for as long as she can remember. She will do anything, anything, to get a leading role. Okay, maybe faking her own abduction was extreme. But a true actress suffers for her art. And Hope is a born actress if ever there was one.

Editorial Reviews

From School Library Journal

Grade 7–10—Who is she—Hope Shay or Bernadette Romano? Kidnapping victim or manipulative schemer? Mitchard pulls out all the stops in this psychological thriller about a 15-year-old Michigan actress (stage name, Hope) who attends the elite Starwood Academy for the Performing Arts. Despite the jealousy of her fellow students, Hope seems to be thriving and has landed the starring role in the student production of Romeo and Juliet. She has also fallen deeply in love with her own Romeo, actor Logan Rose. In fact, they plan to get some money together and live in L.A. or New York City as soon as she's 16. But something goes terribly wrong, and suddenly everyone suspects Hope of faking her own abduction and fabricating her romance. Peeling the layers of her story away reveals the truth in bits and pieces, and the ambiguous conclusion feels absolutely realistic. This riveting page-turner is sure to be in hot demand.—Susan Riley, Mount Kisco Public Library, NY
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

In journal entries chronicling her first year at an arts high school, 15-year-old Hope, an ambitious actress who sees herself as "a dark-skinned Gwyneth Whatever-Her-Name-Is," pleads with readers to judge her recent misdeed--a faked abduction--as the misguided act of an exploited ingenue. From Hope's passionate, sexual affair with her male lead in Romeo and Juliet to the betrayal that foils their ransom-collecting plot, it all sounds like something out of a teen-targeted Hollywood thriller. Soon enough, though, Mitchard opens telling chinks in Hope's account, ultimately revealing her protagonist's struggle with very real psychotic delusions. As in Chris Lynch's Inexcusable (2005), the intended and unintended disclosures of an unreliable narrator are fascinating, although the therapy situation that concludes Hope's story feels preachy and contrived. Even so, Mitchard's first YA effort will earn many fans, who will enjoy teasing apart the truth from self-serving bluster while connecting Hope's experience with timely questions about societal obsession with fame. Jennifer Mattson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 12 and up
  
• Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: HarperTeen (February 19, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0061116866
• ISBN-13: 978-0061116865
• Product Dimensions: 7 x 4.8 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 0.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,479,376 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Jacquelyn Mitchard was born in Chicago. Her first novel, The Deep End of the Ocean, was published in 1996, becoming the first selection of the Oprah Winfrey Book Club and a number one New York Times bestseller. Eight other novels, four children's books and six young adult novels followed, including The Midnight Twins, Still Summer, All We Know of Heaven, and The Breakdown Lane. A former daily newspaper reporter, Mitchard now is a contributing editor for Parade Magazine, and frequently writes for such publications as More magazine and Real Simple. Her essays and short stories have been widely anthologized. An adjunct professor in the Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing program at Fairfield University, she lives in Wisconsin with her husband and their nine children

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Courtesy of Teens Read Too, March 1, 2007

By 

TeensReadToo "Eat. Drink. Read. Be Merrier." (All Over the US & Canada) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Now You See Her (Hardcover)

NOW YOU SEE HER is an amazingly realistic look into the life of a self-centered girl who has been showered with attention from her parents all of her life. Bernadette, or Hope, her stage name, dreams of being a famous actress--and she is willing to do anything to get to the top. Her mother has always pushed her so hard, and now her mother's dreams for Hope are her own. Hope knows she's the best and explains that her lack of friends is simply because everyone is jealous of her talent. At fourteen, she is accepted into Starwood Academy, a prestigious acting school in Michigan. Hope is sure that this is where her career will take off, and she doesn't mind in the least that she is a bit of an outcast. After all, she has Logan. Logan Rose. The most amazing boy she has ever met. Hope finds herself lost in her infatuation with Logan. Everything in her life revolves around their budding romance.

The two of them formulate a plan, a plan to elope when Logan graduates. Their plan requires one thing, money, which they plan to extract from Hope's parents by faking her abduction. Faking a kidnapping is risky business, but Hope is willing to do anything for Logan, anything for their future together. Hope dreams of the day when the two of them will be winning Academy Awards together, the perfect couple.

Hope's story is told through her own eyes, and I felt every emotion with her. I felt the pride in her triumphs as well as the pain of feeling lost and confused, like you are the only one who knows the truth. But it is only at the end, when the real truth is finally revealed, that you realize that Hope Shay is not all that she appears to be.

Reviewed by: Amber Gibson

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Inaccurate diagnosis for the unlikable narrator, February 23, 2008

By 

Jules (Long Island, NY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Now You See Her (Paperback)

A friend recommended this book to me after reading it and I couldn't have disagreed more with this choice. SPOILERS******** I found the narrator to be thoroughly unlikable. Very soon into reading it, I realized that half of what was going on was a delusion. I said to my friend, Hope is psycho affective or in some delusional state- this isn't really happening. A few twists "got me" but even they were disappointing. Mainly, I was stunned by the diagnosis of "borderline personality disorder". The only accuracy to this was that there is no medication that can treat that disorder, however those suffering from BPD do not make up people or situations; the closest resemblance to this is by saying that they tend to misconstrue social situations and are plagued by obsessive and/or negative thoughts. Truly, BPD is most closely linked to a form of manic depression and sufferers experience mixed episodes and rapid mood swings. It is a MOOD disorder, a PERSONALITY disorder. Hope suffers from fugue states, hallucinations, and psychosis. She is psychotic, bordering on schizophrenic. As they say in Seinfeld, not that there's anything wrong with that, but let's call a spade a spade and a psychotic a psychotic. I don't understand why there are so many positive reviews for this; I can't recall the last time I felt I had so thoroughly wasted my time reading a book. In the end, Hope doesn't seem any better off than when she began and I found her to be an incredibly unsympathetic character. I would not recommend this book at all. Save yourself some time and read Girl, Interrupted instead.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Now You See Her, April 20, 2007

A Kid's Review

This review is from: Now You See Her (Hardcover)

Now You See Her, written by Jacquelyn Mitchard, is the tragic story of Hope Shay. Hope is an incredibly commited actor, and always was. The older she became the more she pushed herself. She lived life upon the stage, and off the stage she didn't have one. Hope trained her to be the best, and she was. She was talented, and she and her mother knew it. Once off at new school for teens like herself- the kind that are destined for fame; Hope is pushed too far, too hard, too long. And when a teen is pushed farther than they can go.... it can end painfully. Mitchard does a wonderful job of writing as a fifteen year old.