Crazy Love

November 5, 2012
Miyah Nicols is a good girl gone bad. A focused student, she has a tight-knit group of friends and her sights set on attending Juilliard as a dancer. After Miyah falls hard for gorgeous college freshman Sincere Lewis, suspicion, obsession, and jealousy take over her life. Soon she's skipping school, stalking Sincere outside his house and online, becoming violent with perceived rivals, and treating everyone badly ("I will wrap my hands up in her weave and drag her through the streets," Miyah thinks to herself after a friend jokes about messing around with Sincere). In his first solo novel, Abrams, coauthor of the recent Hollywood High, offers a drama-filled cautionary tale about getting in too deep. Spoiled and self-obsessed, Miyah isn't always easy to relate to (she's the kind of girl who gets a BMW and gifts from Gucci and Tiffany for her 17th birthday and still has plenty to complain about). But while Miyah's last-minute awakening is abrupt, Abrams doesn't have her make an unrealistic 180 either. Ages 14âup. Agent: Sara Camilli, Sara Camilli Agency.

November 1, 2012
"[W]hen I was your age," Kamiyah's older sister Erika explains in this engaging, well-paced cautionary tale, ."..we used to call that kind of love 'crazy love'--becoming obsessed with a relationship." The summer before her senior year of high school, Kamiyah meets Sincere at a fraternity-hosted party. Soon, their relationship begins to consume her life. Kamiyah texts Sincere constantly, even while hanging out with her friends, and gets angry if she doesn't hear back right away. She worries that Sincere is cheating and stakes out his home to try to catch him. Meanwhile, Kamiyah's father gives her a BMW for her birthday, and Kamiyah ends up on punishment after arguing about it with her mother, whom she calls the Wicked Witch. Narrator Kamiyah sees her behavior as justified, but readers are given enough outside information (her friends' frustration with her constant texting, Sincere's discomfort when she fights the girl who flirts with him at a pizza shop) to take a different view. Both the dialogue and Kamiyah's narrative voice are fresh and current. Although the story ends somewhat abruptly, an epilogue set three months later gives readers some idea of how Kamiyah's life and choices have changed. A thought-provoking and timely tale, told in an up-to-date, believable voice. (Fiction. 12-16)

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February 1, 2013

Gr 9 Up-Kamiyah Nichols's family is so financially secure that her father buys her a BMW for her sweet sixteen. As role models, however, her parents lack the basic necessities: they can't communicate with their daughter, who's beautiful, smart, ambitious, volatile, and insecure. She's a spoiled rich kid who figures it's better to spy on her man than to keep a relationship honest. Thus the subtext of Crazy Love is an exploration of how an obsessed teen can stealthily crawl through the online personal data of another. "Fly girls never look thirsty," she tells herself when she meets Sincere Lewis at a party, but she can't slow down because he's a catch: a college student who's top-drawer sexy and headed for the NBA. But if the plot turns on whether or not Miyah will give it up for Sincere, it also produces the novel's best writing. Their intimate moments show him at his most patient and undemanding, a well-drawn contrast to Miyah's awakened passion. Never mind that he also holds on to old-fashioned ideas about marriage that she, a bound-for-Juilliard ballerina, hotly rejects. Then her bright future starts sliding downhill when she's arrested for starting a fight with a rival at a pizzeria. That wakes up the Nichols family and leads to some soul searching, therapy, and, possibly, change. Hear the cliches ringing? Sure, but teens will still keep reading.-Georgia Christgau, Middle College High School, Long Island City, NY

Copyright 2013 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

December 15, 2012
Grades 10-1 Bright and talented high-school senior Kamiyah is at the top of her class, and her aim is to get to Juilliard. Then she hooks up with gorgeous college student Sincere, and her obsession with him takes up her whole life as she cuts school and texts him every minute that they are not together. Where is he? Why doesn't he answer her calls? In her jealousy, she hacks into his Facebook page and e-mail and then takes violent action against him and the girl he might be involved with. In fact, her colloquial, first-person, present-tense narrative, almost all in fast dialogue, reads as if she is talking to a girlfriend, and the fast-paced, contemporary talk will grab readers. There is family drama, too. She loves Daddy, who buys her a BMW, but her controlling mother is stereotypical, even while Kamiyah herself is controlling and ugly. The brand names will date, but the love and obsession are universal.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2012, American Library Association.)