Guitar Girl - Hardcover

Sarra Manning

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0525472347 ISBN 13: 9780525472346

Publisher: Dutton Books for Young Readers, 2004

Synopsis

Seventeen-year-old Molly Montgomery never planned on becoming famous. Molly's band, The Hormones, was just supposed to be about mucking around with her best mates, Jane and Tara, and having fun. But when the deliciously dangerous Dean and his friend T join the band, things start happening fast. Soon The Hormones are front-page news, and their debut album is rocketing up the charts. Molly is the force behind the band, but the hazards of fame, first love, screaming fans, and sleazy managers are forcing the newly crowned teen queen of grrl angst close to the edge. Fame never comes for free, and Molly's about to find out what it costs.

About this title

About the Author

Sarra Manning is a teen queen extraordinaire. She spent five years working on the now sadly defunct UK teen mag, J17, first as a writer and then as Entertainment Editor. She then joined the launch team of teen fashion bible Ellegirl UK, which she later went on to edit and has consulted on a wide range of other youth titles including Bliss, The Face and More.

Sarra was most recently editor of BBC’s What To Wear magazine. She’s now advises a number of UK magazine publishers as well as being a contributing editor to Elle UK. Sarra has also contributed to The Guardian, ES Magazine, Seventeen, Details and Heat and wrote the Shop Bitch column for Time Out London. Pretty Things is her second title for Penguin and she’s currently working on her next book, Let’s Get Lost. Sarra lives in North London with her devoted dog, Dino, the mongrel she saved from an untimely death.

Reviews

Grade 9 Up-Molly, 17, never planned to reach pop stardom. She just enjoyed writing songs and playing music with her friends, Jane and Tara. When they start a rock band called The Hormones, two slightly older guys, T and Dean, maneuver their way into the group, and there is no looking back. Suddenly famous, Molly takes off on tour with the band, performing in England and eventually in the United States. Despite Dean and Molly's frequent confrontations, they fall in love. They have plenty of tender and passionate sex (protection isn't mentioned), until she learns that his motivation for the relationship hasn't been totally honest. Finally determining that rock-star life is less than idyllic, Molly chooses to call it quits, despite lawsuit threats. The story's carefully developed characters and relationships, driven by tuned-in dialogue, make it realistic and compelling. Molly's first-person voice rings clear and true. Like 16-year-old Wonder in Rachel Cohn's Pop Princess (S & S, 2004), she finds herself on a roller-coaster ride through makeovers, alcohol-laden parties, sensationalist critiques, attempts to manage schoolwork, demands of a pushy manager, losing her virginity, and dealing with parents. Wryly funny, often sincere, and sometimes pressed into banshee-like behavior, Molly is endearing in her attempts to reach maturity, sort out what's important, and decide what needs to be left behind.-Diane P. Tuccillo, City of Mesa Library, AZ
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Gr. 9-12. Like a good guitar riff, Manning's debut novel picks up speed after a slow start. Instructed by her lawyer to record her experience in notebooks, Molly Montgomery relates the events leading up to being sued for 5,000,000 by her former record company. Armed with a guitar and three chords, Molly and two friends start a band, The Hormones, hoping to inspire a girl revolution. Some edgy boys and a conniving manager join the group, and their speedy rise to fame--filled with the requisite sex, drugs, and rock and roll--is fueled by quirky Hello Kitty lyrics. Naive Molly spurns her parents' instincts, trusts the wrong people, ignores the warning signs of friend Jane's downward spiral, squabbles with the band, and falls in love with the boy she thought she hated before finding her own voice and self-assurance. It's the depiction of the music scene (the narrative features "reprints" from industry mags and fan webzines), which comes complete with plentiful "snogging," that raises this above the mediocre--but don't expect it to go platinum. Cindy Dobrez
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Edition details

• Publisher: Dutton Books for Young Readers
• Publication date: 2004
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0525472347
• ISBN 13: 9780525472346
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 224