Counting Backwards

Gr 9 Up–After she steals a car to run away from her alcoholic mother and because she doesn’t want to live with her emotionally distant father, Taylor Truwell lands at a maximum-security boarding school in Georgia. Intent on escaping from Sunny Meadows, she has a student, A.J., copy a car key she molded during her automotive shop class. Taylor uses and lies to her closest friends in order to plot her break out. Her plans are foiled when A.J. informs the school “safeties,” and she realizes that she must pretend to be working toward rehabilitation in order to be released. The resilient teen has to deal with strict rules, a group of bullies, and her parents. Eventually, she listens to her friends’ and father’s advice and decides to “Play their game.” Her therapist places her in a gardening therapy program with A.J. where she is forced to resolve her conflicts with him. Taylor works on repairing herself and her relationships with friends and her father and is released from Sunny Meadows. Readers may find Lascarso’s debut to be a little underwhelming and predictable; however, libraries with insatiable problem-novel readers will want to add this title to their collection. Martha Brooks’s True Confessions of a Heartless Girl (Farrar, 2003) is a good alternative for those looking for a novel starring a female car thief who tries to escape reality.-Adrienne L. Strock, Maricopa County Library District, AZ