LET'S GET LOST
Sarra Manning
Speak/Penguin Young Readers Group
Fiction
Hardcover: 0525476660
Paperback: 9780142411858
320 pages

Sixteen-year-old Isabel is a "Mean Girl" who tries to hide the pain of losing her mother by acting up and being mean to everyone who crosses her path. At her British school she is the leader of "The Trio of Evil" --- a.k.a. her friends Dot, Ella and Nancy. The Trio of Evil aren't very nice to each other and are even worse to the rest of the school. But when Isabel meets an older boy named Smith, she finds her hard edges softening.

LET'S GET LOST starts the summer after Isabel's mother unexpectedly dies. But that doesn't mean that Isabel has changed her ways. She thinks, "They wanted me soft and weak so they could stop being scared of me. They were going to have a long wait."

Isabel boozes, flirts with guys, stays out until all hours of the night, and fights brutally with her father. On one of her party nights, she meets Smith. Isabel finds herself falling for him, but their relationship is based on lies. She tells him she's 18 rather than 16. In order to spend more time with Smith, Isabel lies to her father and tells him she's hanging out with Dot. She claims she spent the entire weekend with Dot instead of telling him the truth --- that she went to London for the weekend with Smith and his university friends. As Isabel and Smith's relationship grows more intense, however, Isabel's web of lies catches up to her and she realizes that she's not only lying to Smith and her father but also to herself.

Fans of Sarra Manning will be thrilled to see the return of characters from her previous novel, GUITAR GIRL, in LET'S GET LOST. Smith's roommates are none other than Molly Montgomery, GUITAR GIRL's main character and lead singer of The Hormones, and Jane, another member of The Hormones. In addition, Manning does a great job of linking pop culture --- especially music references --- throughout the book, which makes the story realistically modern.

It's interesting to see LET'S GET LOST portray a far-from-normal "nice" main character in Isabel. At the same time, it's difficult to truly understand the motivation for Isabel's actions until we find out what exactly happened to her mother. The real story behind her mother's death, however, isn't told until the end of the book. I wish I had known this information sooner; it would have made me like Isabel just a little bit more.

   --- Reviewed by Kristi Olson

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