Making Pretty

March 9, 2015
New York City native Montana, feeling abandoned now that both her older sister and her best friend have left for college, is thrilled to be hanging out with Karissa, a charismatic aspiring actress who’s 23 to Montana’s 17. When Montana’s sister, Arizona, returns home for the summer, a further betrayal awaits: Arizona has broken the sisters’ pledge to never have “work done” (their oft-remarried father is a plastic surgeon). Haydu’s (Life by Committee) dialogue shines, and she effectively conveys Montana’s confused yearnings and resentments (“Arizona is bustier and sadder, things that go hand in hand in my opinion”), but the plot soon becomes overly complicated. Karissa turns out to be involved with Montana and Arizona’s father, forcing the sisters to struggle with their loyalties; Montana acquires an excessively devoted boyfriend; and she’s still grappling with self-image and her father’s belief that every woman needs a surgical assist. The title suggests that this is Haydu’s focus, but the many plot developments—including multiple marriage proposals and visits to former stepmothers—leave the book feeling somewhat overstuffed and jumbled. Ages 14–up. Agent: Victoria Marini, Gelfman Schneider.

February 15, 2015
Family, first love and the search for identity butt heads in this coming-of-age story set in the heat of a Manhattan summer.Seventeen-year-old Montana looks forward to bonding with her sister, Arizona, and her best friend, Roxanne, both of whom have just returned from their first year of college. Montana's hopes are dashed when Arizona comes home with a boob job, and her friendship with Roxanne is compromised by Roxanne's Montana-less college life. Feeling left behind by the two people who know her best, Montana seeks friendship and sisterhood with Karissa, a 23-year-old bohemian and aspiring actress with a tragic past. When Montana meets Bernardo, a hipster boy sporting a scarf and thick black-framed glasses, she falls pink-hair-over-heels in love, but with her plastic-surgeon father freshly divorced from wife No. 4, she doesn't exactly have a positive role model for romantic bliss. Character development is strong: Although Montana spends most of the novel attempting to reinvent herself to suit what she thinks other people want her to be, she learns to accept herself and her life as they are, complete with imperfections and uncertainty. This summer read has the ubiquitous quirkiness that has become a marker of contemporary adolescent realism and will appeal to fans of John Green and Rainbow Rowell. (Fiction. 15-18)

April 15, 2015
Grades 9-12 Since their mother left, sisters Montana and Arizona have faced the world together. As their father, a plastic surgeon, continues to search for love through a string of failed marriages, the sisters have formed a unified front against each new interloper in their home. But when Arizona leaves for college, Montana flounders. When her sister returns from college a changed woman and Montana becomes involved in a new relationship, she must begin to determine her own identity independent of her sister, father, and boyfriend. In a breathy first-person narrative, Montana describes what it's like to be lost and to finally find herself again, but she is not the only lost one: her father obsessively remakes all of his wives to be physically perfect, which ultimately distorts Montana's understanding of love and acceptance. It's a lot to let go of, and the addictive intensity of her relationship with her boyfriend doesn't help matters, but with the help of friends and some self-reflection, she learns how to be herself on her own terms. Fans of Sarah Dessen's character-driven novels will appreciate Montana's journey of self-discovery.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)