From Publishers Weekly
In her debut, Johnson not only creates a refreshingly ordinary narrator living among realistically flawed family and friends, she also frankly and even humorously deals with the sensitive topics of sex and race. In suburban Maryland, during the summer Robin turns 15, her only friend moves away and her beauty-obsessed mother wants to put her chunky daughter on a diet. Robin often feels "piggy" and she gets lost in the shuffle as her mother plans her own wedding, her brother and his wife prepare for their baby's birth and her father ditches her with her young, beautiful stepmom (to play golf, Robin suspects). Robin is sensitive and can be pointed in her narration, and she has very human weaknesses (as when she sneaks Nutsie Boy cones), but she can also be clueless, like when she offends her first date, mixed-race Tri, by saying he's not "really black." While spying on her "hot" older neighbor, Frankie, she catches him having sex with her stepmother, which introduces her to a "parallel universe for liars," where people live their secret lives. Robin finds herself trapped in that world, too, when Frankie begins toying with her, engaging in foreplay and awakening her sexuality, but leaving her feeling guilty, too. Eventually, Robin must deal with her double life. Johnson handles these conflicts elegantly, with Robin making small gestures, rather than sweeping changes. Ages 12-up.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From School Library Journal
Grade 9 Up-The cover photograph of two condoms in their wrappers gives fair warning of the content of this book. Overweight Robin, 15, is surrounded by dreadful role models. Her mother, father, stepmother, and neighbor Frankie (an actor wanna-be) are obsessed with physical appearances. In addition to their rather manic pursuit of sex and beauty, which Robin witnesses inadvertently or by design, she finds her own social life in upheaval and is devastated when her best friend moves to Alabama. Frankie has sex with her stepmother and seduces Robin. Meanwhile, the teen begins dating a new boy, and the contrast between his maturity and the reckless disregard of the adults in her family is well delineated. Robin's concerns and her language are frequently crude, but sadly believable. Not every element of the novel is equally successful: the letters Melissa writes to Robin are so poetic as to be nearly incomprehensible and the typeface is difficult to decipher. Still, this is the work of a promising writer and will be undeniably interesting to some teens.
Miriam Lang Budin, Chappaqua Public Library, NYCopyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
