Three years after the disappearance of her beloved brother, a California girl reaches out to a girl on the other side of the world--hoping she will turn out to be much more than an internet friend. Told in a kind of gothic trance, from two points of view, about daring to trust that someone out there cares.
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Three years after the disappearance of her beloved brother, a California girl reaches out to a girl on the other side of the world--hoping she will turn out to be much more than an internet friend. Told in a kind of gothic trance, from two points of view, about daring to trust that someone out there cares.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY REVIEW 11/08 Gothic Lolita: A Mystical Thriller Dakota Lane. Atheneum/Seo, $17.99 (208p) ISBN 978-1-4169-1396-2
Ambitiously structuring her stylish novel as alternating narratives and interspersing these with black-and-white photos, Lane (The Secret Life of It Girls) focuses on two half-Japanese, half-American girls who forge an unusual bond over their blogs, loneliness and fascination with the gothic Lolita subculture. Chelsea is in L.A. and Miya is in Japan; they've never spoken or even exchanged messages—they simply read each other's blogs. Their lives mirror each other's in their tragedies: when Miya's mother killed herself, her father abandoned her and her brother to an orphanage; Chelsea has not blogged for three years, since her brother disappeared). A manga that the girls love and the photographs add a surreal layer, as do the many mystical elements. There is even a suggestion that the girls have twin souls: Miya's grandmother consoles her about the twin who died in utero by saying that she was born immediately to someone else. Readers will find themselves quickly engrossed. Ages 12–up. (Nov.)