This is going to start off sounding a little After School Special, but bear with me. You gotta trust me on this one…

Fifteen-year-old Maggie Keller used to be popular. That was before the car accident that shattered her self-confidence, her leg and her family, taking her mother’s life. Alienated from her former friends by tragedy, unable to connect with her grieving father, Maggie comes to think of herself as a “Frankenstein girl,” her leg held together with metal rods and screws, her scar and limp ever-present reminders of her feelings of guilt over her mother’s death. She doesn’t know how to be the girl she was before the accident, not any more.

Enter Dahlia, the new girl at school, who memorizes the poems of Sylvia Plath and worships Jim Morrison. Dahlia, the new friend who has no idea who Maggie used to be, makes it possible for Maggie to start over. Dahlia, with whom Maggie falls secretly in love.

Seamlessly weaving together fantasy, imagined alternative identities and the mortifying daily realities of being 15 and in high school, best-selling adult author Jennifer McMahon’s first foray into young adult fiction is nothing short of breath-taking. I could not, would not put it down. If I could zap this book back to 1993 and into the hands of my 15-year-old self, I would; but I think I enjoyed it just as much now as I would have back then. Maybe more, by virtue of hindsight.

This is a story of first love, grappling with sexual identity, coming of age and coming out; but it’s also about the healing powers of love, shared fantasy, creative expression and truth-telling. Pragmatic, disillusioned Maggie is achingly relatable, and Dahlia’s devil-may-care chutzpah and flair for the dramatic inject just the right tone of levity into an emotionally complex and moving story. Over the course of 246 pages, even the side characters take on lives of their own. I doted on Dahlia’s little brother Jonah, who thinks he is a wizard, and hung on every word of her mother Leah, unmedicated, mentally ill and mesmerizing. The characters here — all of them — were so beautifully executed on the page that I felt like I was right beside them the whole time. I read enough to treasure that rare and marvelous feeling of being transported out of one’s body and into a story. Truly, this is one of those books that makes me love books.


My Tiki Girl by Jennifer McMahon
Dutton Books, 2008
246 pages, Hardcover
ISBN: 9780525179437
GENRE(S): Fiction, Young Adult, Lesbian