kristen tracy

lost it by kristen tracy

I started the first day of my junior year of high school zitless and basically happy. I was sixteen and feeling good. I didn't have any major issues. Okay, that's not entirely true. For weeks I'd been growing increasingly concerned about Zena Crow, my overly dramatic best friend. She'd been going through a rocky stretch and had been talking incessantly about building a bomb. Not a big bomb. Just one that was big enough to blow up a poodle.

lost it by kristen tracy

Lost It

What would you do...

...if your best friend were plotting the annihilation of a small, furry neighborhood poodle? Or if your parents up and moved to an Outward Bound-type survival camp in the middle of the desert? How about if your grandmother bought you new bras and underwear -- and you actually thought they were a teensy bit, umm, sexy?

Most people would not react well.

Tess Whistle's junior year of high school is off to a fairly bizarre start. One might even say her life is spiraling out of control. But with her sense of humor firmly intact and her first real boyfriend on her arm, Tess is dealing with the ridiculous twists quite well, thankyouverymuch.

Just wait until her shoes explode.

Read an excerpt.

Publishers Weekly Starred Review:

Readers will be immediately drawn to this hilarious and heartfelt first novel about a girl who falls in love -- and has her first sexual experience -- and tries to let go of her fears. Tess Whistle lives in Idaho with paranoid parents, who "became born again" after a kitchen fire.

The book begins with an account of how she loses her virginity, then flashes back to the start of junior year, when she expected to stay a virgin until she is "at least engaged." Tess has plenty of phobias, mostly of the natural world where she could be "torn to pieces by a pack of recently relocated gray wolves." Just before her whole life crumbles, Benjamin Easter transfers to her school. Tess falls intensely in love without realizing "that you can't depend on another person to provide your own balance."

And there's no doubt that Tess's life is out of balance: Her best friend is building a bomb, claiming she wants to blow up a poodle, her parents run off to join a survival camp, and Tess tells Ben she is diabetic as way of explaining her "juvenile" apple juice box, then maintains the lie.

Readers may be so busy laughing out loud at the eccentric characters and outrageous plotting that they may not realize how much they have grown to empathize with desperate Tess until her relationship is in crisis. Readers will fall in love with this offbeat story -- and its rich lesson about living a life without guarantees. Ages 14-up. (Jan.)

School Library Journal:

Gr 9 & Up - Idaho teen Tess Whistle is having one weird junior year -- she, her family, and her friends are all "losing it." Her parents, born again following a serious grease fire in the kitchen, take off unexpectedly to a survival camp in the Utah desert, leaving Tess with her grandmother. Tess's best friend, Zena, reacts to her parents' marital troubles by making elaborate plans to blow up a poodle. And Tess herself, who used to be 100 percent certain that she'd wait until she was married before she had sex and is deathly afraid of the wilderness, loses her virginity out of doors with her boyfriend.

This book is a great read, hilarious and poignant at the same time. Teens will laugh out loud at Tess and her frank, humorous observations about the outrageous situations in which she finds herself, but they will also empathize with her feelings of not being in control of her life. They will also be heartened by the conclusion of the novel, for even though Tess is unsure of what will happen next, she has finally come to terms with the fact that life offers no guarantees, saying, "For the first time in a long time, I feel hopeful. And ready for what comes next." - Kathleen E. Gruver, Burlington County Library, Westampton, NJ

Lost It was released in paperback in January 2007 by Simon Pulse.

ISBN-10: 1-4169-3475-8

ISBN-13: 978-1-4169-3475-2

Recommended for ages 14 and up, grades 9 and up.

 

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