On a Slippery Slope

December 15, 2015
Having just moved to Maine, 13-year-old Hannah Smart gets herself into big trouble when she lies, telling her new classmates that she's an ace skier and snowboarder. The way Hannah, in her second outing (more absorbing than the first), gets into this situation is neatly set up and completely understandable. However, her continued insistence that she's a first-rate skier and the complicated set of lies that follows is cringeworthy and hard to swallow. And even though it's clearly explained, the hatred she immediately engenders in classmates Chloe and Ivy seems way over the top. Things pick up plotwise when Fitzpatrick's effervescent heroine gets a job as a gofer at the local television station, the same station where her father works as a meteorologist. A freak accident during which Hannah saves the day puts her on the air, and her charisma is such that she immediately scores her own weekly segment. How Hannah manages her job--interestingly, the characters of her adult co-workers are more layered than her classmates--while simultaneously negotiating a new school and all that goes with it is the stuff and substance of the rest of this easy-breezy novel. Although straight commercial fiction, this lightly amusing first-person tale delivers a smoothly entertaining ride ending with a deft setup of the final book in the series. (Fiction. 8-12)

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