Rosie Girl
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3.0 • 1 Rating
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- $6.99
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- $6.99
Publisher Description
Little Peach meets We Were Liars in this haunting YA debut about a troubled teen searching for her birth mom who uncovers disturbing family secrets along the way.
After her father passes away, seventeen-year-old Rosie is forced to live with her abusive stepmom Lucy and her deadbeat boyfriend, Judd, who gives Rosie the sort of looks you shouldn’t give your girlfriend’s step-daughter. Desperate for a way out, Rosie would do just about anything to escape the life she’s been handed. Then she finds a letter her dad wrote years ago, a letter confessing that Rosie's birth mother isn't dead, as she believed, but alive somewhere—having left them when Rosie was a little girl for reasons he won't reveal.
Rosie resolves to find her birth mom, and she'll put everything on the line to make that happen. She hires a PI paid for by her best friend, Mary, who turns tricks for money. Unlike Rosie, Mary's no delicate flower and when she sees the opportunity to make some cash and help out her closest friend, she takes it. Romance blooms when the PI Rosie hires hands the case off to his handsome nephew Mac, but Rosie struggles to keep her illicit activities with Mary a secret. Things begin to unravel when Rosie starts getting creepy anonymous texts from johns looking for Mary. And then there's Mary, the one person Rosie can count on, who's been acting strangely all of a sudden. As Rosie and Mary get closer to finally uncovering the truth about Rosie's mom, Rosie comes face to face with a secret she never saw coming. A visceral, poignant tale of friendship, sacrifice and identity, Rosie Girl is an unforgettable debut that will leave you guessing till the very last page.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Seventeen-year-old Rosie's best friend Mary has always been her savior. Desperate for cash Mary wants to leave Miami, and Rosie needs to pay a private investigator to track down her birth mother they hatch an unorthodox plan, with Mary trading sex for money. The business is both illegal and dangerous, quickly attracting the wrong kinds of attention, while Rosie's alcoholic stepmother remains oblivious to it all. Through a series of shattering revelations, debut author Shepard unwinds a tale of dark secrets about family, trust, and identity. Clues to a final twist are peppered throughout, becoming more obvious as the story barrels toward an abrupt ending; readers will gradually recognize the unreliability of Rosie's narration. Shepard paints a painful portrait of a teenage girl living on the fringe with few protections at her disposal. But supporting characters, including wild-child Mary and Rosie's private investigator turned love interest, remain largely one-dimensional, and the novel doesn't full delve into the issues of mental illness, addiction, and abuse that it raises. Ages 14 up.
