Amy Kate, The-Used-To-Be "It" Girl

The-Used-To-Be "It" Girl

Amy Kate

Dorchester Smooch, Oct 2004

ISBN: 0843954736

For several seasons, Rhiannon Melissa Taylor was the star of the popular TV kid show Wing and a Prayer; last year she seemed to be on the cover of every magazine. However, at fifteen she gained teenage weight and recently was fired because with the loss of her cuteness her TV producer considers her as "Little Girl Lard". A Humiliated Rhee returns to her family home in Queens.

Rhee must adjust from being the It girl to high school coed, except she must elude the paparazzi, who enjoy snapping pictures of those who have fallen in where they are now milieu. She struggles with adjusting to being the ex-cover girl princess and wonders if she is one of those child stars that never made it to adult status. While Rhee struggles with being a teen nobody, she fails to notice the conflicts at home. Instead, Rhee wallows in the notion that her life is yesterday's news, her present a disaster, and a future seems zeroed, but her family depends on her bringing in the income.

Rhee makes this young adult tale work as she seems so genuine, struggling to adjust from the lights of Hollywood superstardom to burrow amidst working-class Queens. The storyline is intriguing to follow as the weight of the world (or at least her family) is on Rhee's shoulders, but she sees no opportunity to regain all she lost when she fell from grace. Even adjusting to returning to the family fold is a trauma. Fans will enjoy "this rags to riches to rags" tale starring a wonderful teen facing demons and traumas in re-adapting to a totally new and what seems to her humiliatingly lesser life.

Harriet Klausner