Almost Fabulous

March 10, 2008
Set in London, Radford’s teen fiction debut features an especially likable narrator with untapped extrasensory powers. Having just discovered her shocking gift, 14-year-old Fiona Blount can’t decide if she should tell her best friend and risk looking crazy. Plus, she worries that having ESP and a talent for mind control might put a dent in her “Total Anonymity” plan for school, which she has perfected to avoid the wrath of resident mean girl Melissa. And to complicate matters further, Fiona thinks she may have finally found her father, from whom her mother was accidentally separated after their fleeting affair at a music festival 15 years earlier. The plot is at times clichéd: Fiona’s ”secret god,” cool guy Joe, breaks up with Mean Melissa and promptly falls head over heels for her, and Mean Melissa is revealed to have a troubled home life.Even with weaknesses, the novel shines when it focuses on Fiona’s struggle to understand her ESP and her attempts to make contact with her father. These elements are more than enough to capture and sustain readers’ attention. The author also writes for adults, under the name Michelle Cunnah (Confessions of a Serial Dater
). Ages 12-up.