Brodsky, Daniella. One Trick Pony. Delacorte Books for Young Readers. Oct. 2007. ISBN: 978-0-385-73452-3.
-- School Library Journal, 6/17/2008 7:37:00 AM
Gr 7-10. Though I liked the idea of a coffee shop drawing people together, it didn't work. Everything about the story seemed forced and unrealistic. The characters seemed to follow the general formula for current YA fiction - there was a musician, the depressed girl, the beautiful overachiever, and the playboy, and of course, all of them had parent issues.
The perspective switched between characters every chapter and it seemed so unnatural for the book to do this because there was nothing that really linked things together. I wondered if in real life, these people would even be friends. Even in the book I wondered if they were friends!
All of the settings were really under-developed. Supposedly they were in high school, but I don't think that the name of the high school was even mentioned, let alone anyone attending class. More detail was given about the taxi that one character rode in than most of the apartments that the characters lived in. The plot never followed through on anything and subplots were attempted but pointless. I was especially annoyed with the past of the owner of the coffee shop; it would have made sense for something more to be revealed about her at the climax of the story but instead she left. The point of a mystery is to solve it at the end. - Caitlin, age 17
This review is from a member of the Teens Know "Best" YA Galley Group of the St. Paul Public Library and the Metropolitan State University Library and Learning Center (MN), a part of YALSA's Young Adult Galley/Teen Top Ten Project which uses 15 public libraries and school library media centers from across the country to provide feedback to publishers of young adult books.
