Love & Lies: Marisol's Story

Who says a beach read has to be trashy? No such thing, say I! I spent Sunday afternoon at Lake Michigan and, since the water was closed due to bad rip currents, lay on the beach reading Love & Lies: Marisol's Story, Ellen Wittlinger's latest.

If you've read Wittlinger's Printz Honor-winning Hard Love, you've met zine writer Marisol Guzman. If not, you're about to. Marisol is eighteen years old, smart, gutsy, and gay, and she doesn't care who knows it. She's taking a gap year in Cambridge, Mass, to (mostly) make her own way in the world while writing her first novel.

When she shows up for Day One of her novel-writing course, two surprises await her. First, old friend Gio/John, who had a horrible crush on her last year, is in the class. (Awkward...) Second, the teacher, Olivia Frost, is drop-dead gorgeous, overflows with writerly wisdom, and thinks Marisol is a real talent! And that crush Marisol has on her just might be requited...

Thrilled to be in her first real relationship, Marisol can't see what her friends—and the book's readers—do almost immediately: that Olivia is not the gem Marisol thinks she is. It's wrenching to see the usually confident (possibly a little conceited) Marisol crumble under Olivia's manipulative thumb, and more than one relationship will be destroyed before things look up. But Wittlinger's well-developed characters and realism delve neither into melodrama nor easy solutions. It's good, solid writing in a good, solid story.

If you've read other books by Ellen Wittlinger, you won't have escaped the references to various folk musicians (e.g., Dar Williams) her characters love. In Love & Lies, it's Girlyman that gets the nod on page 80, which tickled me to no end for reasons explained here.

Love & Lies was reviewed (more spoilerifically) at Big A little a and Worth the Trip. Wittlinger was also recently interviewed by the Class of 2K8 about her experience as a Printz Honor winner.

Now, to go back and reread Hard Love...