Lessons Learned

November 1, 2009
Gr 8-10-In this third installment in the series, Keysha has finally managed to attain some fragile sense of normalcy. The wealthy father she had never known has taken her into his family in the suburbs, rescuing her from her selfish mother and the inner-city Chicago neighborhood that threatened to suck her into life as a stoop-dwelling teen mother. With the help of her still-wary half brother Mike and her new boyfriend, Wesley, Keysha finally shakes the stigma of false accusations of drug use and is ready to start over. But even as she manages to distance herself from her old neighborhood, it comes to herin the form of her deadbeat mother. Despite Justine's extensive past neglect, a judge agrees to award unsupervised visitation, a decision that takes Keysha right back to the environment she has tried so hard to escape. Can she avoid the criminal life and constant chaos that are all her mother has to offer, while also managing to help naïve Mike avoid the same traps? Heavy on plot and light on character development, this novel will have strong appeal to teens who crave drama, action, and problems, problems, problems in their reading. The writing style can be quite stilted and unnatural, with the dialogue between teenage characters ringing especially false. However, fans of urban fiction will likely look past the novel's lack of literary merit to devour the juicy, fast-moving plot."Meredith Robbins, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis High School, New York City"

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