Things You Either Hate or Love »

BRIGID LOWRY is a well-known writer in Australia, where her novels Guitar Highway Rose and Follow the Blue were runaway successes with young readers.

Fifteen-year-old Georgia has to get to the Natural Affinity concert. She's obsessed with the lead singer, Jakob, and will do anything it takes to see him live. However, there is one major obstacle standing in her way: money. To earn some extra cash, she takes on a string of disastrous jobs, one ending worse than the next. Georgia also struggles with her weight, slipping grades, her lack of a boyfriend and the distance that seems to be growing between her and her best friend. Add to all that the tension with her mother, and life really starts to get complicated. True to Brigid Lowry's colorful style of writing, the book is peppered with lists Georgia writes in her diary, like "Ten things you can do with a sausage besides eating it" and "Great excuses for not doing my homework." Georgia is funny, honest, far from perfect, and will win the heart of every girl who has ever pined hopelessly after a rock star.

Publishers Weekly

Readers will instantly relate to funny, honest 15-year-old Georgia. "I like to think of myself as a brilliant creative person, but sometimes I just feel like a sad lonely girl with a big bum." Lowry (Guitar Highway Rose) covers familiar teen angst territory, from Georgia's tension with her single mom to a seemingly unrequited crush, but she handles the topics tenderly and realistically. Georgia's infatuated with the lead singer for Natural Affinity, and takes a string of bad jobs so she can fly to one of the band's concerts (one job comes to a sudden end when she angrily hits her manager with a loaf of bread). But when she starts working at a grocery store, she falls for a cute clerk who reads her his poem about toilet paper. Meanwhile tension with her mother ebbs and flows, but gradually comes to a head when Georgia learns a secret about her long dead father. Throughout, she writes lists in her diary, full of funny things such as "10 things you can do with a sausage besides eating it" and small heartbreaks (on the list "Ways in which I am like my mother" she writes: "We both miss the same man"). Ultimately, this is a well-executed story, with a vivid narrator sure to win readers' hearts. Ages 12-up. (Mar.) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.