Everybody Knows Your Name

Gr 7 Up—When 10 assorted and unlikely teens are chosen to appear on a Big Brother-meets-American Idol reality TV show called Spotlight, personalities are bound to spark. These participants will live together in a fabulous mansion in the Hollywood Hills, and after each performance one will be eliminated by the panel of celebrity judges and the voting American public. In alternating chapters, Seigel and Bradshaw flesh out a distinct and often quirky personality for each of the performers, family members, and program employees through their interaction with the main characters, Magnolia and Ford. She is a pretty young Californian whose father died after leaving her and her fame-obsessed mother, and whose surfer boyfriend pops in and out of her life. Magnolia wants to change—and this show might be a terrific way to reinvent herself. Ford's family in Arkansas spends more time in jail than in their broken-down home, and needs to win Spotlight in order to pull himself out of the family's cycle of self-destruction. The teens make an unlikely couple, but their relationship makes great publicity for the show. Through costume and hairstyle changes, rehearsals, high-profile parties, and live performances, they soon learn the price of fame, and the consequences of their actions. A must-read for fans of light romance and reality TV and those who enjoyed Heather Demetrios's Something Real (Holt) and Kate Hattemer's The Vigilante Poets of Selwyn Academy (Knopf, both 2014).—MaryAnn Karre, West Middle School, Binghamton, NY