[.ca] Most Wanted (ISBN 0451196856)

From Amazon.com:
Arley Mowbray is a drop-dead gorgeous 14-year-old, who, with her long, muscular frame and mature, collected manner could easily pass for 18. And pass she does. On a dare from her outspoken best friend, Elena Gutierrez, Arley writes to convict Dillon LeGrande in prison and convinces him she's a college student (though she hasn't made it out of junior high). Therein begins an ill-fated love story that myths are made of and men die for--except that's not what Dillon has in mind. Living in south Texas in a poor Tex-Mex community, Arley dreams of a less provincial life and secretly begins a love affair with Dillon via correspondence, which produces a flurry of poetry and achy-breaky love songs. Against the wishes of family and friends, Arley weds her amour, who promptly fathers her child, breaks out of prison, and mysteriously disappears. Fortunately for Arley, she has found a guardian angel in the form of Annie Singer, a straight-talking public defender from New York. Annie becomes the mother Arley never had, protecting her from Dillon and a love-starved home. Despite the strength of their bond, both underestimate Dillon's determination to get his child, no matter the cost. Jacquelyn Mitchard's first novel, The Deep End of the Ocean, was the first to receive Oprah's benediction, instantly making it a bestseller and thrusting Mitchard into the halls of literary stardom. Oprah's picks tend to stay within the thematic boundaries of overcoming dysfunction, harping on the nitty-gritty details of abuse. However, The Most Wanted boldly strides away from this and examines the many dimensions of motherhood, realistically depicting the ties that bind women, while supporting beyond debate that, yes, good girls do fall for bad boys. --Rebekah Warren

that's what we are:
i was very impressed with arley's life philosophy at so young age and learning it hard way: she is not sorry for any past event or feeeling ,because everything contributed to the person she is NOW, the past, the present and the future,yet to come. and i was also impressed with annie openness ,at her age, for relationship possibilities . great book,which makes you think.

Not bad:
I liked this book. I didn't LOVE it, but I liked it. The relationship between Arlington and her mother was interesting. I would read it just for that aspect of it. I've never known of a woman to just completely not care about her daughter and be so self-centered the way Arlington's mother is.

Great as jailhouse comedy:
I'm more than halfway through the book now, so I haven't quite taken in the whole thing, but I can give some impressions. Emotionally it grabs you, that's the up side. If enjoyment is an index of a writer's success, I enjoyed the book. It's very seductively written and goes down one's throat like bubbly, fizzy, great tasting alcohol. This is especially cool because there is a great need to play off against the morbid, too-conservative, hypocritical and dowdy aspects of life. People take themselves too seriously and need a little laughter and imagination in their life. The down side is that if I had a teenage daughter I know I wouldn't want her into anything like this. No way! Especially the part about condoms, strip searching (complete with body parts) and the legal right to have jailhouse sex. Horrors! But seen as strictly comedy, it is a great read (for an adult or even an older young adult, that is)! If one views this book from a tongue-in-cheek perspective, however, one can detect a well-developed sense of irony throughout. It is a great take-off and caricature on the corruptness and impersonality of the legal system in which one is definitely just a number. And in which so much wheel spinning and misspent, financially disastrous do-goodism takes place. So much so that Mitchard goes to the other extreme and develops Arley's "overlooked" individuality to an intoxicating, some might say refreshing, somewhat absurd but still very interesting and certainly humorous degree. In conclusion, although I liked the book and could relate to it emotionally, I think Mitchard went too far in scraping the bottom of the barrel. For example, talking about "crotch jumping" and a "pulse in her crotch" starting to kick in, etc. when Arley thought about Dillon--and Annie thought about the handyman who worked on her house, etc.--is cute, but so overly physical. What has any of that got to do with the purported theme of the book, "love" that conquers all? The beauty of the book, however, from my point of view is its very appealing, no-holes-barred, tell-it-all-straight-from-the-shoulder, ultra-colloquial conversational style. So sometimes I could give Mitchard the benefit of the doubt about the kinky stuff. At other times it turned me off! The poetry was rather corny and unbelievable, also, and the events implausible. For example, a boy such as Dillon would ordinarily have had a great deal of understandable hostility towards the opposite sex, especially at the beginning, and this is not addressed very much, if at all. In spite of this, the emotional impact and freshness of seeing the world through the eyes of a fourteen-year-old is very cute and endearing and may or may not make up for other flaws, depending on the viewpoint of the reader. However, I agree with one of the other reviewers who said that you have to like a book like this, and if you don't, you just don't...This book was definitely not on a par with "Deep End of the Ocean" and I know what still other reviewers meant when they said the "foreshadowing (and transitions) were gimmicky." In its defense, however, I don't think the author intended this as a book to be taken strictly "literally."

Amazing Book:
This was an amazing book. I don't think it's very well known...but I fell in love with it. I really recommend it. It's a hidden treasure, not unlike Deep End of the Ocean, except that's not so "hidden".

A unique perspective of an all too common situation:
It's not often that an author gets inside of a teenage mother's head--and reveals one of those that tries very hard to be careful and logical. There are some of these girls out there: those that want to do the best things and yet the rest of the world would never see the method behind the madness; or the logic (skewed, but understandable) in what they're doing. I found this to be an EXCELLENT book... true to the times and yet not downhearted enough to make me want to put it down (because we have enough misery--don't we?).