Like Mandarin

Review "A beautifully crafted, bittersweet story about an unlikely friendship that sets two very different people free." --Melina Marchetta, author of the 2009 Printz Award winner JELLICOE ROAD "Hubbard uses beautifully evocative language, and the details of the badlands setting are perfectly realized. Even minor characters are complex and believable, but most compelling are Grace and Mandarin... This excellent novel is a must for high school collections." --*School Library Journal * "Hubbard's first novel is replete with lovely imagery, with the Wyoming landscape being perhaps the most nuanced of her characters... Grace's struggle to reconcile her past and present selves, along with her recognition of Mandarin's fragility, drives this lyrical coming-of-age story." --*Publishers Weekly * Product Description It's hard finding beauty in the badlands of Washokey, Wyoming, but 14-year-old Grace Carpenter knows it's not her mother's pageant obsessions, or the cowboy dances adored by her small-town classmates. True beauty is wild-girl Mandarin Ramey: 17, shameless and utterly carefree. Grace would give anything to be like Mandarin. When they're united for a project, they form an unlikely, explosive friendship, packed with nights spent skinny-dipping in the canal, liberating the town's animal-head trophies, and searching for someplace magic. Grace plays along when Mandarin suggests they run away together. Blame it on the crazy-making wildwinds plaguing their Badlands town. Because all too soon, Grace discovers Mandarin's unique beauty hides a girl who's troubled, broken, and even dangerous. And no matter how hard Grace fights to keep the magic, no friendship can withstand betrayal. From the Hardcover edition. When shy, awkward fourteen-year-old Grace Carpenter is paired with the beautiful and wild Mandarin on a school project, an unlikely, explosive friendship begins, but all too soon, Grace discovers that Mandarin is a very troubled, even dangerous, girl.