Girl, Hero

By Carrie Jones

FROM THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF NEED AND CAPTIVATE

After landing a lead role in the high school musical, freshman Liliana Faltin is hoping for some stability and happiness in her life. But her mom's live-in boyfriend has a thing for booze, touching, and telling dark family secrets. And the other people in her world aren't exactly role-model material, either. Her unreliable father cries a lot, wears blue tights, and drives a little beige car. Her backstabbing best friend cares more about being popular than being real. And her older, married sister is showing up with big purple bruises on her face. Then there's Paolo, who's cute and nice and makes Lily want to recite romantic movie lines.

To deal, Lily writes letters to John Wayne. Sure, he's a dead movie cowboy, but at least the Duke knew about doing the right thing, about being a hero.

Now, Lily just needs to figure out how to be a hero herself.

Praise for Tips on Having a Gay (ex) Boyfriend and Love (and other uses for duct tape):

"Provocative . . . The author's poetic prose ably captures her heroine's emotional upheavals."
—Publishers Weekly

"...honest, earthy, and appealing." —KLIATT

"An emotional story that's true at heart." —Kirkus

• Language: English
• Publisher: Llewellyn Worldwide
• Release date: Sep 8, 2011
• ISBN: 9780738722238

Carrie Jones

Carrie Jones is the New York Times bestselling author of the Need series—which includes Need, Captivate, and Entice—as well as Girl, Hero; Love (and Other Uses for Duct Tape); and Tips on Having a Gay (Ex) Boyfriend. She is the coauthor, with Steven E. Wedel, of After Obsession. Carrie lives in Maine with a scrawny cat, an obese cat, two tremendously large white dogs, and occasional pixies.

Reviews for Girl, Hero

[abbylibrarian_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This novel started off slowly for me, but the more I read it the more I really, really liked it. It's a bit odd. But I loved the main character Liliana and I loved how the things that happened in the book were not all bad and not all good. I loved that there were very complex characters and that even by the end they weren't all tucked into neat little boxes. I will review this on my blog and I will have more to say then. Probably this book won't be everyone's cup of tea (like I said, it's a little odd), but I think it's one of my favorites this year.

[theepicrat · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Her mother has recently allowed an old friend to move in with them on a temporary basis until he gets back on his feet. However, Lily suspects that her mother just doesn't want to be alone and this stranger is just next in line for her mother's affections. We learn that Lily has had to witness her mother going from man to man - and, as most stories go, these include the not-so-stellar characters.My heart went out to Lily and her desire to follow in Mr. Wayne's footsteps towards herodom. Picturing myself in her shoes, just on the cusp of high school, I cannot imagine how much she had to grow up based on her family life. And it also makes me warm and fuzzy when she landed the leading role - go, theater rats! :) She was definitely on the right track to high school happiness - not caring whether it makes her popular, finding like-minded friends, etc.Of course, there was a boy in the picture - his name was Paolo, and he was incredibly sweet :) I mean, how hard is it to find a boy who understands that you adore John Wayne and goes out of his way to watch his movies and even quote from them, accent and all?