in a sentence: 14 year old Harley Columba is your average well-liked, smart, and charismatic teen. Until she realizes she is probably adopted, starts drinking and doing drugs, and loses her best friend. Did I mention her home life sucks too?

Harley faces some real struggles in this novel. While some of them might not reach all teens (feeling adopted, physical abuse, etc.), I feel that the emotions and the way she deals with them are very true to the young adult experience. As the adult reader, I could sense things coming, that lying only makes things worse, and all of those words of wisdom that come from making the wrong choices like Harley. She uses art as her escape from the world, and so creates an incredibly healthy and beautiful outlet which sets a great example for young adults struggling with the difficult stuff in life. From the young adult perspective, Harley is someone we can identify with either though personal experience or through someone we know - and that really hits home with the reader.

While I liked the rawness of Harley and the writing, with her struggles, with having shreds of hope for her fall to the ground with yet ANOTHER bad choice, I don't feel this title is worthy of nomination. I got pretty bored during the middle of the novel from where she is sidetracked from her main goal from the beginning of finding her real father to where she gets on the bus to NY. Some of the middle of the novel served to show her downward spiral, her relationship with her mother, and the [seemingly pointless] relationship with Mrs. Tuttle, and to help the reader relate to Harley. However, I feel a vast majority of it was a waste of my time, and resulted in a rushed ending when she FINALLY finds her father in New York. The novel builds and builds to a rushed conclusion, which I found to be really disappointing. The conclusion in itself was very realistic and in tune with the rest of the book, but ultimately disappointing from a literary standpoint.

Again - I feel that as far as characters to relate to and readability, the novel is great. Young Adults will connect with Harley and her struggles for sure. She makes bad choices, some good ones, and then more bad ones to create an awful situation for herself that many of us have been in before. The reader hopes for Harley, and walks beside her though her personal struggle which is a microcosm overshadowed by the alcoholic step-dad and crabby mom reality. However, the novel really lacked the necessary literary quality of a nominated title for me, because of the drawn out and somewhat plateaued middle of the book and the ending that just fell flat. ( )

Harley has brown eyes, her parents have blue.
Harley is convinced she is adopted when her parents tell her that they lost her birth certificate while moving to a new home. living with a drunken father and abusive mother, Harley is destined to find her real father. She sets out to find her father and on the way encounters many things such as drugs, boyfriends and old friends. i really likes this book because she goes through so many real life situations that teens today may be able to relate to. ( )

Harley is fourteen and a very talented artist. She lives with her alcoholic father and hot tempered mother and is convinced that she is adopted. After finding a harlequin doll with a note from "Papa," she heads to New York City in search of her biological father.

Other books to try: Hard Love, Rats Saw God ( )