I just love Elizabeth Scott, and this book just throws more fuel on the fire of my love.

(But hey, Elizabeth? Couldya link to Indiebound on your website? Fan the flames of love a little higher?)

This book is blurbed by Sarah Dessen, and she’s who I’d compare Scott to the most, although Scott’s characters and situations are generally a little quirkier than Dessen’s and Dessen’s books generally aren’t funny. But there aren’t a lot of teen books you can hold up to a girl who comes in looking for “something like Sarah Dessen,” and Scott’s books? You can hold those up successfully, and have been able to since her first book (BLOOM) was published.

My favorite of her books is PERFECT YOU, but SOMETHING, MAYBE is coming up behind for the two-spot…no, it’s passing PERFECT YOU…but PERFECT YOU is coming up on the outside…oh, hell. Who can pick? A tie.

17 year old Hannah is the product of her mother’s relationship with a Hugh Hefner-esque adult entertainment mogul. Her mother now makes her living stripping down and chatting on the internet live with strangers, and her dad’s famous all over not only for his lifestyle, but for the reality show that splashes it all over national TV. After Candy (mom) and Jackson (dad) broke up, Candy married a nice blue-collar guy who Hannah considered her real dad. When he died, they got in their car and ended up in Slaterville. Nowheresville.

After a few years of unbearable comments about her parents and their lifestyle (and what kind of girl she must be, by extension and heritage), Hannah has perfected the art of Being Nobody. She slips quietly through her high school classes, hair pulled back in a ponytail, body disguised by baggy jeans and huge shirts, mouth generally closed. It’s a little different at her job at a BurgerTown call center, where she takes fast food orders alongside Finn, a smartmouthed football player who’s teammates with some of Hannah’s biggest tormentors,  and Josh, a worldly literary activist-type who’s the subject of Hannah’s fierce crush. Here she can at least exchange barbs with Finn, even if trying to talk to Josh still leaves her tongue-tied. So her job and her friendship with Teagan, a 19 year old college student who returned home to help her sick mom, keep her from fading entirely into obscurity.

Candy helps with this too, of course, but in all the wrong ways. It’s hard not to be noticed when your mom’s wearing skintight miniskirts and half-tops to the grocery store. And suddenly Jackson’s calling, trying to re-establish a relationship. And what’s going on with her and Finn, anyway? It’s JOSH that she has a crush on.

Isn’t it?

Watching Hannah manuever through the roadblocks of her various relationships is one of the best times I’ve had in ages. And the cringe-inducing scenes with her parents make for some of the best YA writing I’ve ever seen. Scott excels at this – I cringed off and on all through PERFECT YOU as well. It’s rare that a book actually makes me want to writhe in my seat out of embarrassment for the characters. Underneath the cringing and the funny, though, is a lot of deep, raw emotion whose truth rings clear.

I think it’s only a matter of time before Scott’s spending some time every weekend dusting off her Printz award.

(I’m not in love with the cover, though – that girl isn’t Hannah! It’s certainly pretty – who doesn’t love periwinkle – but that bare-shouldered girl with the armful of bracelets and the hair worn down couldn’t be less Hannah. I hate when marketing and the character don’t agree.)

Buy SOMETHING, MAYBE from an independent bookstore!