The Sweet Life

September 15, 2012
Grades 7-10 After she loses her mother to leukemia, 16-year-old Janey believes she has no family leftshe and her mother were estranged from her English grandparents while they were still living. But when Janey receives an invite to come stay with her long-lost aunt and cousin in Italy, she jumps at the chance. She will be living la dolce vita, the sweet life. And it is sweet! Soon she is enjoying her life in a cosmopolitan city, trying new fashions, and finding herself caught in a love triangle between two Americans in Rome. However, the specter of an Internet stalker threatens her safety with every move, warning her of a fatal car crash, the same thing that killed her grandparents. Lim (Mercy, 2011) writes this flight of fancy with a maximum of frivolity but keeps the thriller element alive via terrifying web-chat brushes with Janey's online stalker. This breezy romance will hit the spot for any reader in need of something sweet but tart.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2012, American Library Association.)