LUCKY GIRL

A rollicking ride of a debut novel about the weird world of teenage stardom.

Eleven-year-old Lucy loves to dance, and she’s determined to win a spot at the Dance Awards, a national competition, even if it means ditching her best friend, threatening to kill herself if she can’t attend an expensive competition in California, and plotting to blackmail her older brother to get him to help her hire a choreographer. Winning nationals is just the beginning: Lucy winds up on Dance Till You Drop, Juniors!!, a fictionalized version of Dance Moms, a Lifetime reality-TV show. “I just want to dance,” Lucy repeats, often as an excuse when her ambition wins out over her friendships with the other young dancers she meets in the hothouse-flower environment of reality TV. Throughout, Tagle-Dokus offers a lively critique of the manufactured melodrama of reality shows. “There is reality TV, and then there is the reality behind the reality TV,” Lucy explains, “and that’s why people watch, poised for the moment the visage slips. Reality tastes better after diet reality.” Split pages—where Tagle-Dokus offers the “Diet Reality” version of scenes alongside the dance mothers backstabbing each other in the “Confession Booth” are followed by “Reality” sections, where Lucy tries to make sense of this warped world. When Bruise, a mega–pop star and one of the judges, takes a liking to Lucy, Lucy heads out to LA to become Bruise’s muse and the oversexualized star of Bruise’s music videos. Tagle-Dokus’ depiction of Hollywood is both hilarious and horrifying, with adults behaving like spoiled children and children willingly giving up their innocence because they don’t know any better. Despite her many mistakes, Lucy is a likable narrator, and the novel’s many memorable characters—who aren’t so dissimilar from the cast of a reality show—all have their own fascinating stories.

A novel as binge-worthy as reality TV.