FIFTEEN CANDLES

A guilty-pleasure page-turner introduces a wealthy and spoiled Cuban-American teenager, Alicia Cruz, 15, whose passion to start her own business will take her and her closest friends, Carmen, Jamie and Gaz, on a roller coaster when she decides to organize Sarita’s quinceañera party. But not a traditional one. Alicia has her own avant-garde ideas, and although she did not have her own quince, she is determined to become an entrepreneur in the party industry serving Miami’s exclusive high-class society. Alicia’s parents, the deputy mayor and a judge, witness how Alicia turns her internship at the City Hall into her own business headquarters with predictable consequences. A frivolous but charming story that accurately presents the antics, motivations and dreams of a very small sector of the diverse Latino juvenile population in South Florida, one that adores pop culture and fashion icons but at the same time remains respectful of conventional family values and traditions—just right as the opener for this Spanish-accented chick-lit series. (Fiction. 13-16)