Hancock Park
A Novel
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
Becky Miller lives in the best neighborhood, goes to school with the children of movie stars, and has her psychiatrist on speed dial. She may live in the City of Angels, but this sixteen-year-old's life is far from perfect.
By day, Becky navigates the halls of one of L.A.'s most elite schools, where the mean girls are a special breed of mean, and at night, she deals with sparring parents, a grandmother who is man-crazy, and a younger brother, Jack, who answers only to J-zizzy. As Becky's life comes crashing down around her, she struggles to put it back together and learn to grow up while trying to stay sane.
Isabel Kaplan dishes the dirt on the children of Hollywood's elite—from Spago delivered to campus at lunch and shrinks who dole out psychotropic drugs as though they're candy to parent-free parties at the Four Seasons—the lives of Becky and her creator, Isabel Kaplan, are like no other, and yet strangely, just like everyone's.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Set in Los Angeles, teenage author Kaplan's debut details 16-year-old Becky's struggles with her parents' divorce and her social life after her best friend moves to New York. Readers (and Becky) learn of her intelligence when she takes an IQ test and has high results, but little in her observations and narrative suggest a genius to accompany that score (her involvement in the Model UN at all-girl's academy feels forced). Her desire to be popular fluctuates between her scorn for the Trinity, the popular girls in her junior class, and her joy at hanging out with them ("I had gone out with an extremely attractive, very popular boy, and I was friends with the most popular girls in school. Life was good"). Slowly, Becky makes some positive changes-she switches from a prescription-happy psychiatrist to a more effectual one, and realizes her new boyfriend is a jerk. Her problems will resonate with and be familiar to readers, though her personal growth feels rushed and does not build in a realistic way. Ages 14-up.
