What We’re Reading

Haters | Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez

Rating:

Paski Archuleta is absolutely certain her father has lost his mind. He went to LA for talks–there’s interest in making his popular comic Squeegee Man into a movie. He came back an entirely different person. New clothes, shades, teeth, attitude, vocabulary, and diet. She has no idea what to think. But she doesn’t have long to ponder it either, since there’s an even bigger bombshell in all this. They’re moving. The movie is going to happen, and he needs to be there to work on it ASAP. As in, now.

Leaving Taos does not thrill Paski in the least. Her dad sees adventure, Paski sees disaster. New Mexico, California is not. Although upon arriving she realizes they might have more in common than she first thought. In scenery at any rate. Which is pretty much where it ends.

In Cali, all drivers appear to be maniacs. All cars are luxury. All roads are 6 lanes. All buildings are humongous.

As first order of business, Paski takes off on her bike to check out her new school. In a fit of pride she can’t help, she takes the direct route down–straight down the hill–to show off her biking skills, since it’s the one thing she can really do.
And she get immediate notice. From the perfect guy.

The next morning, she gets some more notice. Of the bad kind. And she knows, without being told, that the car full of laughing girls are the girls. Worse, the head girl seems to have a thing with her perfect guy.

In general, she finds her fellow students shocking, and her teachers more so, and the parents the most. They tend to look younger than their children.

Her first party turns into a near death experience, and the drama and craziness doesn’t really slow down from there. This is war, pretty much. And she doesn’t intend to lose.

This is one of the best coming-of-age/finding-self stories I’ve read in awhile. Paski finds out the hard way that ignoring her insticts and truest self can only cause harm, and that things really do happen for a reason, even if that reason is long in showing itself. There really are perfect boys, and girls can be too cruel to comprehend.

But she sticks to her guns, navigates through the minefield, and finds herself in a place she never would have expected to be.

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The Haters | Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez by Jaemi, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

This entry was posted on Monday, April 2nd, 2007 at 9:54 am by Jaemi and is filed under Book Review, Staff Favorites. Find similar posts by selecting and of the following tags: family, high school, motocross, realistic, supernatural, ya fiction. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.