Malibu Carmie
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- $4.99
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- $4.99
Publisher Description
Carmie Hoffman is ready for everything to change. She wants to lose 20 pounds and be a beautiful girl. She wants someone to think she’s special. She wants to move out of the Valley and stop worrying about her clinically depressed mother, who’s tired and sad almost all of the time. Then, out of nowhere, she sees her opening—when her best friend convinces her mother to drive them to Malibu Beach, Carmie’s tired, sad, and oh-so-old mom grabs a surfboard and impresses even the locals! That’s when Carmie learns that her mom had a secret life before Carmie—a life where she was a Malibu surfer. Carmie knows that she was meant to learn this. That she and her mom were meant to move to Malibu and form a surfing dynasty with some of the surfing legends her mom used to hang out with. In her movie notebook, Carmie writes herself a starring role as a glamorous, gorgeous surf star. But not everything is as easy as it is in the movies, and Carmie learns that her mom is a much more complicated and wonderful person than she ever knew.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Carmie Hoffman, the 13-year-old heroine of Komaiko's (Annie Bananie) promising but ultimately disappointing novel, pens scripts about a fantasy life in which she's rich and beautiful. In her real life, she is spending the summer in the hot Los Angeles valley with a sad mother, who "couldn't stop being tired" since her father left three years ago. When Carmie's best friend meets a cute surfer boy, he invites them to Malibu beach and Carmie's mother, Elaine, drives them there. Carmie is shocked when her mother catches a wave on a borrowed surfboard; it turns out Elaine used to be a surfer, and her old surfer friends, including a boyfriend named Moondoggie, still hang out at that same beach. Carmie see a chance for her mother to be happy again, and to even find love herself. Carmie's over-the-top screenplays, which run throughout the novel, serve as a clever way to track her evolving fantasies, and readers will likely identify with the heroine's emotions, from her concern for her mother, to her own anxiety about her body (she wears jeans over her swimsuit). But despite the promising elements of the story, the narrative unfolds slowly, and the characters never seem completely true to life. Ages 8-12.
Customer Reviews
Malibu Carmie
This was the greatest book ever!!!!! I loved it it was amazing:)