Gr 10 Up-Quick's nuanced story of rebellion and its cost will appeal to fans of Stephen Chbosky and John Green. Nanette O'Hare is drifting through high school playing her role as good girl perfectly when she is given a copy of a cult classic novel called The Bubblegum Reaper . Realizing the path she's on is not of her own choosing, she seeks out the reclusive author and becomes romantically involved with the troubled Alex, another fan. Nanette acts out against her quiet suburban life, only to realize those choices also come with a price. Nanette's development, from the first spark of independence and the initial rush of her relationship with Alex to her subsequent concern and later dread and even her experiment with a return to conformity, rings very true, as does her selfish na&9;vet&3; in believing rebellion is the one path to happiness. Filled with literary allusions to Greek tragedies and The Catcher in the Rye , this work will be a hit with fans of Natalie Standiford's How to Say Goodbye in Robot (Scholastic, 2009). VERDICT Like the many anticonformity books before it, this will find a dedicated audience among teen readers.— Elizabeth Saxton, Tiffin, OH

Nanette is by most accounts a success: she does well in school, has popular friends, is a brilliant soccer player, and already has college recruiters knocking down her door. So why isn't she happy? When her favorite teacher gives her an out-of-print cult novel, The Bubblegum Reaper, the answer starts to shake loose. Fixated on the novel's enigmatic message of quitting fe? School? Convention? e seeks out the author, who eventually introduces her to Alex, another lover of the novel. Together, they puzzle over the novel's mysteries until their friendship builds to a touching romance. But when Alex starts taking the novel's message too far, Nanette starts to see the harm in taking an intransigent stand. Quick creates beautifully well-rounded characters, particularly Nanette, whose first-person narrative, rich with wry observations and a kaleidoscope of meaningful emotions, offers great insight into the mind of a teen on a sometimes-sluggish, spiraling path toward sorting herself out. In the end, Nanette finds there are no easy answers, and maybe none at all, but that's perhaps the most powerful lesson.

Conventional high-schooler Nanette's life changes after she befriends Nigel Booker, elderly author of a classic cult novel about nonconformity. Booker sets her up with fellow teen fan Alex, a poet with a troubled, violent past. This is an ode to revolutionary literature--its power to inspire change and incite action (positive and otherwise); it's also an engaging bildungsroman as Nanette comes into her own.

She was always good at soccer. Nanette's kicks were truer and went farther than anyone else's, and when she was teamed with her friend Shannon, they were unbeatable. College scholarships were a given. But when a favorite teacher gives her the cult classic novel that impacted him as a youth, she finds that it touches something within her as well, something that chafes against the accepted ideas of success. Booker, the author of the novel, befriends her and a troubled young poet named Alex. He encourages them to choose their own paths. When Nanette decides she wants out of the expected, she finds her path very rough indeed.The author's beautifully written first-person narrative captures the thoughts and feelings of a sensitive eighteen-year-old girl struggling against the shallowness she sees around her. Not least of her strengths is the courage with which she faces the realization that her beloved novel cannot provide the answers to her real problems. The author's prose flows clearly and simply at just the right pace; even the poetry he writes for Alex is elegant and nuanced, foreshadowing the young man's crisis. Chapter titles are intriguing, too, and contribute to plot development in unexpected ways. All of the elements of this novel work together to make this an outstanding coming-of-age story.Marla Unruh.This is a book that readers will want to read twice to take it all in. Nanette O'Hare needs something but does not know what. She finally finds it in a book that starts to change her life for better and for worse. Readers will find themselves rushing to finish. When they do in fact finish the book, they will be sad, almost like they are losing a friend. 4Q, 4P.Savannah Withrow, Teen Reviewer.