The Girl I Wanted to Be
A Novel
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- $16.99
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- $16.99
Publisher Description
As a lowly freshman named for "The King," Presley Moran walks high school corridors paved with the stuff of family legend. Her cousin Barry, a senior heartthrob and brainy varsity letterman, insists that looking good on paper is the key to success. But Presley's young aunt Betsi, a former homecoming queen, has her own ideas about good looks and how to use them.
"Can you keep a secret?" Betsi asks Presley, who, at age fourteen, is eager for entrée into the adult world of beauty, attraction, and romance. But as Presley is about to discover, some secrets should never be revealed. Will the illicit thrill of being a trusted confidante, privy to the details of muddled entanglements and incompatible desires, be worth the consequences of guilt by association?
Propelled by the crash of falling idols, The Girl I Wanted to Be is a timeless and true portrait of passion, loss, and hard-won wisdom.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
From the start of this thoughtful novel it's clear that the girl who 14-year-old Presley Moran wants to be is her vivacious, daring and alcoholic aunt, Betsi. Only a teenager when her niece was born, Betsi convinced her sister to name the baby Presley, after Elvis. But Presley is everything her aunt isn't: cautious, insightful and wise. Though she is blessed with a close extended family and a nerdy younger brother (saved from easy caricature by taking comfortably to his thick glasses and pressed shirts), Presley still must learn to navigate the murky waters of high school. Hunky first cousin Barry, a popular senior, is a help, but when he becomes secretly involved with Betsi, a relative through marriage, tragedy threatens. Presley's string of high school firsts including Halloween mischief and slumber parties are soon outweighed by dismay and disillusionment at her discovery of Betsi and Barry's relationship, which turns predictably ugly. Their coupling doesn't come as a surprise, but the delicate manner in which sophomore novelist McCandless (Grosse Pointe Girl) relays the affair does.
