The serious kiss comes in a wonderful final chapter containing a rare gift: a supremely satisfying last sentence. Dad’s alcoholism hits bottom and rehab ensues Libby’s tone shifts, thankfully, from an overdramatic annoyedness to an open realness. Far away from her old best friend (and co-conspirator in getting a “serious kiss” from a boy), Libby forms a new life in the tiny desert town. Lamenting that “everything awful happen to me,” Libby’s yanked out of her small town and moved to a Barstow trailer park (surprise: it’s a retirement home!) next door to an unknown woman (surprise: it’s her grandmother!). Libby’s screwy family includes a mother more likely to say “dinneroo” than “dinner” and an older brother who hides cigarettes in his hair worse, no one sees her, her father’s an alcoholic, and family dysfunctions go unacknowledged. Fourteen-year-old Libby’s first-person narration of her trials and tribulations starts off gratingly but becomes likable two-thirds of the way through.
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