Haters » (Abridged)

ALISA VALDES-RODRIGUEZ is an award-winning print and broadcast journalist and a former staff writer for both the Los Angeles Times and The Boston Globe.  She was named one of today’s twenty-five most influential Hispanics by Time magazine. Dirty Girls on Top is her fourth novel.  She lives in Scottsdale, Arizona, with her husband and son.

When Paski’s father returns to Taos from a business trip wearing a velour Juicy men’s track suit, she knows her life is taking a turn for the worse. Paski and her father move to Southern California, where his comic strip has been optioned for a movie. At her new high school, money is everything and the haters rule—especially beautiful, cruel Jessica Nguyen. While Paski tries to concentrate on mountain biking and not thinking too much about ultra-hot Chris Cabrera, she is troubled by visions. Her psychic grandmother warned that ignoring her gift would lead to trouble. Can Paskiever find a home in the land of the glamorous haters?

Publishers Weekly

Like the film Mean Girls, Valdes-Rodriguez's (The Dirty Girls Social Club, for adults) first YA novel offers a hip, contemporary close-up view of power struggles and social cliques at an upper-crust high school. Paski (short for Pasquala), a native of Taos, N. Mex., gets a dose of culture shock when she moves to Orange County, Calif., with her cartoonist father, who has just landed a plum animator job. The 16-year-old soon finds out that in her new environs, wealth and outer beauty seem to count for everything. ("The cars the kids drive are nicer than the cars grown-ups drive back in Taos," Paski observes when she catches her first glimpse of Aliso Niguel High.) Trouble arises when Paski's biking skills and good looks catch the notice of heartthrob Chris Cabrera, who dates Jessica Nguyen, the most popular (and feared) girl in the school. At the same time that Jessica threatens her ("Stay away from Chris or you'll be very, very sorry," the girl warns), Paski has a premonition that something terrible is going to happen to Jessica during an upcoming race. The appeal of the novel comes from the author's mix of alluring elements exotic, well-defined characters clad in designer fashions, luxurious settings, dark foreshadowing and intensely romantic scenes. Although the ending reflects fulfilled desires rather than real life, readers will likely take delight in seeing the good guys and the bad guys get exactly what they deserve. Ages 15-up. (Oct.) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.