YA review The Princesses of Iowa by M. Molly Backes
Paige Sheridan is ready to start her senior year of high school with her long-time best friends Lacey and Nikki. Since middle school, the three queen bees have dreamed about becoming princesses, members of the homecoming royalty. And while plans are well in place, the climate has drastically changed. Paige spent the summer exiled in Paris following a drunk-driving accident that could've cost all three friends their lives. Paige returns to find Lacey is crippled and has attached herself to Jake, Paige's boyfriend, and Nikki has plans to create DieDD (don't let friends drive drunk), a student group where she can air her guilt over the accident. A charming new teacher, Mr. Tremont, inspires Paige in creative writing class, where she meets two friends she would've considered social outcasts before. But while Paige is uncovering truths about herself, she begins to make the same mistakes again at great cost to those around her.
Author M. Molly Backes' Princesses of Iowa is a novel with more depth than the age-old high-school mean-girls drama seems to suggest. Teen readers will relate to Paige's struggles to find who she really is as she navigates numerous sub-plots. Paige's mother, a former Princess herself, is still a social-climber who has Paige's near future carefully mapped. Rumors that Mr. Tremont is gay prompt homophobic grafitti and an outcry that has a realistic, but subtle, resolution. Ultimately, Paige asks herself who she really is, and whether she has the power to change for the better. The novel has a few minor flaws, most notably several subplots that come and go and ultimately might've been better left out to trim down the 442 page novel.
But the setting is lush and realistic, and even urban teens who've never thought about Iowa will relate to Paige's struggle to figure out if she's more than the shallow social-climber her mother wants her to be, and whether it's too late to change who she thought she was. The story has been told many times through the ages, but this is an especially well-written version that should have wide young adult appeal. I'll be adding a couple extra copies for my library.
Author M. Molly Backes' Princesses of Iowa is a novel with more depth than the age-old high-school mean-girls drama seems to suggest. Teen readers will relate to Paige's struggles to find who she really is as she navigates numerous sub-plots. Paige's mother, a former Princess herself, is still a social-climber who has Paige's near future carefully mapped. Rumors that Mr. Tremont is gay prompt homophobic grafitti and an outcry that has a realistic, but subtle, resolution. Ultimately, Paige asks herself who she really is, and whether she has the power to change for the better. The novel has a few minor flaws, most notably several subplots that come and go and ultimately might've been better left out to trim down the 442 page novel.
But the setting is lush and realistic, and even urban teens who've never thought about Iowa will relate to Paige's struggle to figure out if she's more than the shallow social-climber her mother wants her to be, and whether it's too late to change who she thought she was. The story has been told many times through the ages, but this is an especially well-written version that should have wide young adult appeal. I'll be adding a couple extra copies for my library.
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