My Life as a Girl

May 3, 1999
First-novelist Mosier authors a sharp-edged romance about an Arizona native hoping to reinvent herself when she goes "back East" to college. Entering Bryn Mawr, Jaime Cody wants to bury her recent past: the arrest of her father for embezzlement, her degrading waitress jobs and her fling with Buddy the "cowboy." All goes well until Buddy arrives on campus, "hell bent" on bringing her home. At this point, readers are taken back in time as Jaime recounts her last summer "as a girl," when she skirts the fate she used to joke about with her best friend, Rosa: "hitched to some loser guy right out of high school, cramped into a trailer in Happy Tepee RV Park, selling fry bread with beans at the mall, drinking beer at desert parties." Mosier cleanly slices Jaime's life into three phases: her upper-middle-class childhood; her traumatic adolescence, when financial security slips away as quickly as her trust in her father; and her emergence into adulthood, when she can view her own mistakes and her parents' mistakes objectively. Featuring lifelike dialogue, three-dimensional characters and an upbeat outcome, the novel also serves up glossy, attention-getting prose ("That was the beginning, as blind and misguided as most beginnings are") that will appeal to female teens not quite ready to bid their own "girlhoods" good-bye. Ages 12-up.

June 1, 1999
Gr 9 Up-When her cowboy wanna-be, con-man, ex-boyfriend Buddy drives 3000 miles and crashes at the Bryn Mawr campus before her mid-year finals, freshman Jaime Cody is thrown into confusion. Her story then becomes an extended flashback of the previous summer in Phoenix where she worked two jobs, one at an elite resort, the other at a family-style restaurant, to help pay for her college room and board. At 18, Jaime is determined to be different from her criminal father, who is in prison while on trial for alleged embezzlementand stealing her college fund. Drawn by Buddys magnetic appeal, Jaime enters into a summer romance that is risky business with potential for fun, drugs, alcohol, and sex but things are left hanging when Buddy is arrested and Jaime heads east to school. It is only when she finishes her exams and returns home that she is able to come to terms with Buddy and with her father. Mosier writes cleanly and realistically of the young womans need to escapethrough jobs, boyfriend, or college. Restaurant scenes ring true even though the depiction of the waitress with a heart of gold, a starving-artist dishwasher, and leering manager are somewhat stereotyped. Jaimes coming-of-age shows her struggle and growth through the emotional upheaval, decisions, and experiences that go with ending high school and leaving home.Gail Richmond, San Diego Unified Schools, CA

Copyright 1999 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.