HONK IF YOU HATE ME

Monalisa Kent is probably the least popular person in small Muessa Junction. When she was just six years old, she accidentally set fire to the futon factory where her father, like most of the town, worked. Each anniversary of the fire, the vultures from the press come to interview Mr. Kent, the hero who saved Mona and her playmate from the fire. As town pariah, she begins collecting bumper stickers, and using them for “poetry raids.” She embraces her outsider status by dying her hair blue and being sullen. She hates the notoriety, with her emotions for those surrounding her a roiling mass of confusion. Eventually, Monalisa finds that events are not what they always seem to be, nor are memories all that reliable, and things end with an uneasy peace between the characters. The middle of the narrative drags a bit, and efforts to make most of the characters eccentric slow things down, but multiple surprises (not all believable) at the end may grab the reader’s attention. (Fiction. 12-14)