Supergirl Mixtapes

Gr 9 Up—After a bout with depression, 16-year-old Maria is finally getting the chance to live with her estranged mother in New York City. Armed with mixtapes of popular bands from the 1990s and her impeccable Southern manners, she arrives at Penn Station only to wait the entire day to be met. This brief abandonment is quickly forgiven as Maria is whisked through the city by her energetic, artist mother, Victoria, and her younger rock-star boyfriend, Travis, to their apartment. Accustomed to her independence back in South Carolina, Maria sets out to locate her new prep school but winds up with a tour of the city on the back of Travis's motorcycle. Before long, the teen is miserable with the harassment and isolation at school and decides to abandon her classes in favor of visiting a cute college student at the record store. But her mother's benefactor, Nina, is quickly alerted to her absences and offers to homeschool Maria instead of sending her to the Brooklyn public school in her mother's neighborhood. As the secrets about her mother slowly come to light, she is forced to face several new realities. Characters' voices are almost indistinguishable and the plethora of bands, artists, and musicians, many of which will be unfamiliar to today's teens, feels forced and heavy-handed. However, the story is compulsively readable as Maria works through her relationships with her boyfriend, mother, and family back home in South Carolina.—Lynn Rashid, Marriotts Ridge High School, Marriottsville, MD