Fourteen-year-old Grace Carpenter longs for something more than the badlands of Washokey, Wyoming. When she was younger she was a pageant princess. Her single mother would doll her up and take her out to compete. That all ended after she pulled a stunt during the finale of one of her pageants, humiliating her mother, who then refused to enter her in another. This is also the first time she sees Mandarin Ramey. When Grace enters high school she is the smartest in her class. She should be a freshman, but has been moved up with the sophomores. Her mother now focuses all her time on Grace's younger sister Tafetta - her new pageant toy.
Grace is awkward, loves her solitude, collecting rocks, and dreams of the day she graduates from high school, so she can leave Washokey. She is also totally enamored by bad girl Mandarin Ramey. Mandarin smokes, skips school, has a bad attitude and gets around. Everyone in town looks down on her, and at the same time, is completely infatuated with her. When Grace is paired up with Mandarin for a school project, the two of them form an unlikely friendship, and Grace finds herself wanting to do everything in her power to stay in the good graces of this badly damaged girl.
Kirsten Hubbard captures small town life perfectly in her novel Like Mandarin. Hubbard's writing is flawless. She describes her settings so vividly, it's easy to imagine yourself standing in the Wyoming badlands, feeling the wind whip at you. Her characters are just as vividly drawn. I knew every one of them, and could compare almost all of them to someone I knew when I attended high school in my own small western town. Both Grace and Mandarin are engaging characters, and though the story is told from Grace's point of view, I felt Mandarin was more intriguing, which actually works. It makes the reader understand why Grace wants so badly to be like her, and needs so desperately to help her. This one comes highly recommended.
- This reviewer also blogs at www.booktwirps.com
- Publisher: Delacourte Books for Young Readers
- Date of Publication: March 8, 2011
