Sixteen-year-old Connelly Sternin’s imagination is her best friend: It transforms her father’s mysterious death into an easily understood acrimonious divorce, while her socially un-navigable swanky Manhattan prep school becomes a land of fairy tales. She is Rapunzel, imprisoned and sheltered in her high-rise apartment, while handsome Old Money scion Jeremy Cole is Prince Charming. Jeremy’s offer of a tutoring exchange—physics for SAT vocabulary—surprises and flatters the socially invisible Connelly. Slowly, Jeremy’s motivation becomes clear: His sister Kate is dying of leukemia, and somehow he knows that Connelly’s father shared the diagnosis. Jeremy and Connelly share late-night cigarettes and increasingly deep confidences, yet somehow romance never enters their minds. Kate’s death provides the impetus Connelly needs to demand that her mother tell her how her father died, and though the long-delayed confrontation is satisfying and believable, by the time it comes, readers may no longer care. First-time author Sheinmel leans too hard on the fairy-tale conceit and underdevelops her secondary characters, but her skill with dialogue and setting show promise. (Fiction. YA)
