THE VINYL PRINCESS

Allie is devoted to musicians in every genre, as long as their tunes were pressed onto vinyl. Her blog and fanzine channel her obsessive theories, enthusiasms and knowledge, all fueled by her job at Bob & Bob’s, a legendary and now fading record store on Berkeley’s Telegraph Avenue. On the side, Allie goes undercover with best friend Kit to prove that Kit’s rocker boyfriend Niles is a faithless jerk, handles her mother’s re-entry into the dating scene with grace and humor and nurses a serious crush on M, a newcomer who turns out to be extremely dangerous. Allie’s blogging success helps her move from a cantankerous intolerance for iPods to an age-appropriate adoption of the digital-culture tools that help her keep her beloved music alive. Once past the exposition-heavy first chapters, Allie's voice grows appealing and authoritative, while other missteps—blog posts are wrongly called “blogs,” and what self-respecting music snob would omit Johnny Marr’s tenure in Modest Mouse from a sentence cataloguing his long career?—are annoying, but ultimately trifling quibbles. A modestly successful debut for indie music retailer Prinz. (Fiction. YA)