ALA Booklist (Sun Sep 01 00:00:00 CDT 2013)

Sones' latest novel in verse is a stealthy tutorial on deception and gullibility. Fifteen-year-old Colette, who first appeared in Sones' One of Those Hideous Books Where the Mother Dies (2004), has a penchant for lying. When she and her adoring little brother, Will, reluctantly join their actress mother on location in small San Luis Obispo, California, she is expecting a boring summer. Enter Connor, who shows up riding alongside Colette's mother's limo on his motorcycle. Could Colette's lost summer be salvaged after all? Readers will be easily drawn in as Sones convincingly relates story after story before revealing that many events were skillfully fabricated by Colette. The well-crafted verse speeds along fluidly, moving readers nimbly through the courtship and the romance, until, yes, they are fooled again. Many readers will recognize their own lives as Connor dramatically beats Colette at her own game and teaches her essential life lessons about vulnerability, honesty, and self-discovery.

Horn Book

I'm what / your English teacher / calls an 'unreliable narrator.'

Kirkus Reviews

Sones returns to the Hollywood setting of her affecting verse novel One of Those Hideous Books Where the Mother Dies (2004) for this partially successful study in narrative unreliability. Almost 16, Colette is not looking forward to summer, which she will spend babysitting her 7-year-old brother, Will, in San Luis Obispo, where their actress mother will be on location. In classically narcissistic fashion, their mother instantly hooks up with her co-star, so Colette spends even more time than she expected playing Hungry Hungry Totally Annoying Hippos with Will, who is credulity-stretchingly adorable ("your ath will be grath," he mock-warns her). Things start looking up when gorgeous Connor, a motorcycle-riding local, bumps into Colette and Will at the farmers market. In seemingly no time, Colette and Connor have a hot-and-heavy flirtation going on around the babysitting. Sones again employs the verse form that has served her well in the past, the one- and occasionally two-page poems keeping pages flipping. Colette is "a big fat / liar" who spins fib after fib, only to contradict it at the very beginning of the next poem. It's a technique that works well as the characters and plot are becoming established, but readers may find it wearing as what was a frothy romance turns into a cautionary tale, one that leaves Colette sadder, wiser and less interesting. Readers who find themselves liking the view through Colette's purple-tinted contacts may well be disappointed by their removal. (Verse novel. 12 & up)

School Library Journal (Thu Aug 01 00:00:00 CDT 2013)

Gr 9 Up-This coming-of-age novel in verse features Colette, a spunky, untrustworthy narrator whose schoolmates like to joke, "How can you tell/if Colette is lying?/Her mouth/is open." Readers will root for the teen as she struggles under the shadow of her beautiful, movie-star mother whose permissive parenting style is equally neglectful. But all is not as it seems, as readers are taken on a roller coaster of truth and lies. By "reinventing reality," Colette creates her own world because, in her words, "my actual life/sucks." Cheeky Colette is well matched by her precocious younger brother. The siblings are forced to follow their mother "on location" to a small town where the week's main excitement is the farmers' market. In "the armpit/of the universe!" Colette meets Connor, for whom she feels a passion that she will struggle to rein in, much like her indulgence in lying. Sones captures the ache of first love. Readers may find themselves laughing, crying, and wanting to believe the unreliable, well-developed narrator. Excerpts may make for a stepping stone to William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet . Like Shakespeare's play, this title lends itself to discussion about healthy relationships, setting limits, defining oneself, and evaluating what is real. Fast paced and great for reluctant readers. Teresa Pfeifer, The Springfield Renaissance School, Springfield, MA