ONE OF THOSE HIDEOUS BOOKS WHERE THE MOTHER DIES

In a story worthy of Hollywood, 15-year-old Ruby moves to LA to join her estranged father, the movie star Whip Logan, when her mother dies. The grieving Ruby, given the fulfillment of many a teen’s fantasies, is nothing but sullen at being wrenched away from her Boston home and friends and plunked into the middle of the celebrity district of Beverly Hills with a father she’s never known. Short, stream-of-consciousness free-verse poems make up most of the narrative, by turns bathing readers in Ruby’s emotions and treating them to very sharp, very funny observations about LA. It’s a hugely artificial form, but its free acknowledgment thereof (“my life better not turn out to be like one of those hideous books where the mother dies and so the girl has to go live with her absentee father . . . ”) allows the text, and Ruby, to explore the possibilities behind the fantasy. Ruby’s eventual adjustment and her rapprochement with her father (cue the violins) will come as no surprise to readers but, hey—this is Hollywood after all, and sometimes a happy ending is exactly what we need. (Fiction. 12+)