Love and Lies: Marisol's Story »

Ellen Wittlinger is the critically acclaimed author of the teen novels Love & Lies: Marisol's Story, Parrotfish, Blind Faith, Sandpiper, Heart on My Sleeve, Zigzag, The Long Night of Leo and Bree, Razzle, What's in a Name, and Hard Love (an American Library Association Michael L. Printz Honor Book and a Lambda Literary Award winner), and the middle-grade novel Gracie's Girl. She has a bachelor's degree from Millikin University in Decatur, Illinois, and an M.F.A. from the University of Iowa. A former children's librarian, she lives with her husband in Haydenville, Massachusetts.

Marisol Guzman has deferred college for a year to accomplish two things: She will write a novel and she will fall in love. How hard could that be? She gets her very own apartment (with her high school best friend as roommate) and a waitressing job at a classic Harvard Square coffeehouse. When she enrolls in an adult education class -- "How to Write Your First Novel" -- there are two big surprises waiting for her: John Galardi, aka "Gio," a fellow zine writer who fell head over heels for her last spring (despite the fact that she's a lesbian) and her instructor, Olivia Frost, the most exquisitely beautiful woman she's ever seen.

But as Marisol ventures into what seems to be her storybook romance with Olivia, things start to go off track. Between the ups and downs of her new relationship, her strained friendship with Lee (a newly out lesbian who is crushing big-time on Marisol), and her roommate's new boyfriend (who is equally afraid of Marisol and their cat) moving in, Marisol starts losing sight of her goals. Is she too blinded by love to see the lies?

In this long-anticipated companion novel to the Printz Honor Book Hard Love, which critics called "A bittersweet tale of self-expression and the struggle to achieve self-love," Ellen Wittlinger offers a novel just as emotionally honest and deeply felt.

VOYA

Eighteen-year-old Marisol, an out-and-proud lesbian, is taking a year off before college to write a novel. Living in Cambridge, Massachusetts, she makes ends meet by working at a local diner, where she meets sweet and shy Lee. Although Lee forms a crush on her, Marisol falls hard and fast for the elegant, enigmatic Olivia, who teaches Marisol's writing course. To Marisol's astonishment, Olivia returns her interest, and Marisol is soon swept up in a volatile affair beyond her ability to comprehend or control. In trying both to placate Olivia's jealousy and restrain (unsucessfully) her own attraction to Lee, Marisol's best intentions catch her in a web of lies. When those lies unravel, she discovers that some poor choices cannot be unmade. This engrossing novel is beautifully structured, with just the right balance of relationships, plot, and setting. The characters are realistic and sympathetic, although adults may be more sympathetic than teens to the hapless Marisol. Readers will understand Olivia's manipulative and deceitful nature, but teens with Marisol's lack of life experience might not so easily understand or forgive Marisol's confusion or her callous treatment of Lee. One thing they will understand, however, is her love of writing. Wittlinger, in reporting Marisol's assignments and using her responses as samples, offers the reader a veritable mini-course in writing. Although it can feel somewhat didactic, aspiring writers will lap it up. Recommend this book to them and to readers who like bittersweet romances with an edge. Reviewer: Rebecca C. Moore