SHOPAHOLIC

To win over a glamorous but unscrupulous girl, an unhappy youngster uses the household money and her mother’s credit card to buy her new chum the latest fashions. Taylor blames herself for the accident that killed her little sister and for her mother’s subsequent depression. The only bright spot in her life is her friendship with childhood buddies Sam and Sophie. But suddenly Sam and Sophie seem to be growing away from her, and the daily grind of cleaning, shopping, and cooking for herself and her despondent mother is taking its toll. So when Kat, a beautiful but troubled older shopaholic who aspires to model stardom, befriends her, Taylor is willing to bend her morals to keep her new pal happy. Although this largely gloomy story ends on an optimistic note for the protagonist, an all-pervasive sense of gray keeps the material flat and it fails to generate the emotional wallop that it should. (Fiction. 12-14)