like mandarin
grace would give anything to be like mandarin.
It's hard finding beauty in the badlands of Washokey, Wyoming, but 14-year-old Grace Carpenter knows it's not her mother's pageant obsessions, or the cowboy dances adored by her small-town classmates. True beauty is wild-girl Mandarin Ramey: 17, shameless, and utterly carefree.
When they're united for a project, they form an unlikely, explosive friendship, packed with nights spent skinny-dipping in the canal, liberating the town's animal-head trophies, and searching for someplace magic. Grace plays along when Mandarin suggests they run away together. Blame it on the crazy-making wildwinds plaguing their Badlands town.
But all too soon, Grace discovers Mandarin's unique beauty hides a girl who's troubled, broken, and even dangerous. And no matter how hard Grace fights to keep the magic, no friendship can withstand betrayal.
(Ages 14+; Penguin Random House, 2011 & 2012)
isbn: 9780385739368
Winner of the 2012 San Diego Book Award for YA fiction
One of Bankstreet College of Education's Best Children's Books of the Year, 2012
“Hubbard uses beautifully evocative language, and the details of the badlands setting are perfectly realized. Even minor characters are complex and believable… This excellent novel is a must for high school collections.”
— School Library Journal
"A beautifully crafted, bittersweet story about an unlikely friendship that sets two very different people free."
— Melina Marchetta, author of the Printz-winning Jellicoe Road
"Hubbard's first novel is replete with lovely imagery, with the Wyoming landscape being perhaps the most nuanced of her characters… Grace's struggle to reconcile her past and present selves, along with her recognition of Mandarin's fragility, drives this lyrical coming-of-age story.”
—Publishers Weekly
"The sparse landscape is the perfect backdrop for the richly detailed characters that populate this coming-of-age story. Grace’s escalating relationship with Mandarin is so raw that it is painful to watch at times.”
—Kirkus Reviews