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Though comfortable with her private school, protective Gramma and house in Toledo, devoted underground hip-hop fan Ann Michelle Lewis sometimes wonders if she's missing out. Enter Raquel Marissa Diaz, aka Raq, a slick fast-talker from Cincinnati who also loves hip-hop. Despite her snooty friends' distaste for the new girl and Gramma's insistence that Raq is “fast as the devil in a skyrocket,” Ann Michelle befriends Raq. But when Raq's scheming turns the two girls' night on the town into several days on the road with rapper Piper and his entourage, Ann Michelle—re-christened Glitz—starts feeling pangs of conscience. The thrill of getting her idol's attention is contrasted with genuinely scary and unsettling moments like standing alone at an unsavory photographer's house party and fending off the advances of Piper's much older right-hand man. Tension and guilt build painfully even as Glitz realizes her dreams of adventure. There's enough wish fulfillment here to delight starry-eyed music lovers and enough cautionary realism to reassure a worried Gramma. (Fiction. 13 & up)
